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Currently viewing entries in the Canadian Politics, Economy and Foreign Policy category.
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Canadiana for May 7th 2009
“Fiddling while the planet burns”
Michael M’Gonigle and Blake Anderson offer a reality check on the carbon tax debate raging in the lead up to BC’s election. The controversy has pitted the B.C. Liberal Party, which introduced the 2.4 cent escalating tax on fossil fuels in July 2008, and the tax’s supporters in the environmental movement, against the NDP, which wants to scrap the tax altogether in favour of a cap-and-trade scheme. Writing in The Tyee, M’Gonigle and Anderson discuss the total inadequacy of either the Liberal tax or the NDP option as a remedy to our energy extravagances.
- Beyond the Carbon Tax — The Tyee
Canadians taking severe economic hit
A new study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ Senior Economist Armine Yalnizyan reveals just how hard the economic crisis is hitting Canada: 387,000 full-time jobs have been lost so far, at a time when working people are particularly vulnerable due to unprecedented household debt loads and an increasingly tattered social safety net.
Miguel and Goliath
Thousands of small farmers in El Salvador are protesting the plans of Canada’s Pacific Rim mining company, fearing the environmentally devastating effects of the El Dorado mine project’s gold and silver extraction processes. Connie Watson reports for CBC Radio One’s Dispatches, which led off last week’s edition with this story.
Greed not need fuels de facto banking bailout
Canada’s banks are capitalizing on the financial crisis by using the proceeds of an indirect government handout to pick over the battered remains of US competitors. Roger Rashi unravels the mysterious case of the mendicant bankers for Socialist Project:
- Canada’s Big Five:Banking on the Crisis? — Socialist Project
Ignatieff’s blustering gives cold comfort to unemployed
In his recent Rabble column, Duncan Cameron argues that Canada’s growing numbers of unemployed have no champion in Michael Ignatieff, who is calling for a review of the EI program and a temporary fix, rather than the needed far-reaching reform:
- Liberals undermine the unemployed — Rabble.ca
Speaking truth to independent power projects
B.C. streams and rivers are being privatized at an accelerating pace, and most river diversions for the purposes of power generation are not even required to undergo environmental assessment. Independent power projects, such as Plutonic Power Corporation’s Bute Inlet project, the largest private hydroelectric power project in Canada, are not a viable response to the energy crunch, explain Chris Genovali, Paul Paquet and Misty MacDuffee in Pacific Free Press:
- IPPs: Green or Greenwash: Water diversions will hurt environment — Pacific Free Press
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Canadian political news roundup for April 16th
Taking a page from the annals of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, authorities in southwestern Ontario arrested over 100 undocumented workers in a series of immigration raids in April. Migrant justice activists Syed Hussan, Faria Kamal and Chris Ramsaroop comment on Rabble news:
Environment Canada set out to understand what needs to be done to save the woodland caribou and then summarily ignored the conclusions of the very experts they enlisted. The Globe and Mail’s Martin Mittelstaedt exposes Environment Canada’s kill-the-messenger attitude:
A new study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) concludes that tax-funded public services allow Canadians to enjoy a much higher standard of living. In a press release, the CCPA cites a major finding of the study to the effect that public services are worth 63% of the income of middle-class families. For the press release and to download the study itself:
Abousfian Abdelrazik is a Canadian citizen who went to Sudan in 2003, only to be arrested under suspicion of being a terrorist. Cleared of the charges nearly a year later, he has been trying since then to return to Canada. The Canadian authorities agreed to repatriate him, but this month, at the eleventh hour, Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon barred his re-entry, citing “security concerns.” Read the editorial in the Toronto Star and the blog by Aidan Maconachy.
In a welcome change of pace, the Canadian Medical Association, traditionally a powerful advocate of greater privatization of healthcare, is likely soon to be headed up by Ottawa doctor Jeffrey Turnbull, an opponent of two-tier medicine and a driving force behind the creation of medical services for the homeless. The Globe and Mail’s Michael Valpy reports:
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Canadian political news roundup for April 6th
Just weeks after International Women’s Day, which Canada’s Governor General celebrated in Kabul, the Afghan parliament passed legislation fitting of the Taliban that would require women in the minority Shia community to obtain permission from a male relative to leave the house and would forbid them from refusing sex to their husbands.
Rabble blogger Derrick O’Keefe offers this astute comment: Canadian media shocked to discover Afghan women not liberated after all
Under international pressure, the Afghan justice department is ‘reviewing’ the legislation, a process that is likely to be protracted. Here’s what the Globe and Mail’s Campbell Clark reports: Afghan rape-law review to take months
And Mike Ferner of Veterans for Peace remarks on a second vote by Canadian Parliament to let U.S. war resisters stay in the country: Canadian Parliament votes again to let U.S. war resisters stay
In a recent editorial, Bruce Campbell, Executive director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, explains why Canada is more vulnerable to the economic crisis than the Harper government wishes to acknowledge: Canadian vulnerability in the face of the global economic crisis
Toronto Star columnist Thomas Walkom muses that Harper may be losing his grip, citing as evidence a series of bizarre actions including making Canada an international laughingstock by barring British MP George Galloway: Bizarre actions show a leader losing his grip
On the benightedness-loves-company front, Conservative backbencher and Christian fundamentalist James Lunny rushed to the defence of Gary Goodyear, Canada’s federal minister of science and technology, who recently equivocated when asked if he believed in evolution – yes, that’s right minister of science and technology Darrell Bellaart reports: Darwin would think again, Lunney tells House of Commons (Nanimo Daily News)
Finally, Frances Russell comments on a new book about Canada’s parliamentary crisis last December, when Harper made the unprecedented move of shutting down Parliament in a bid to retain power after he had lost the confidence of the majority of representatives: Canada’s new solitudes (Winnipeg Free Press)
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