Political commitments on climate action, to the extent they exist, are usually pitched in terms of targets and timelines. BC, for example, has a legislated target of 33% below 2007 levels by 2020; Canada’s official target is a 17% reduction by 2020 relative to 2005 levels. Neither target will be…
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Regardless of the outcome in the City of Regina’s wastewater referendum being held today, there is one thing that is certain. We need to establish very clear rules for how City-wide referenda should be conducted in the future and we need very specific rules on how the City communicates with…
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It’s near impossible to ignore the current debate regarding the Québec Values Charter. It would seem laudable at first for a society to decide to reflect on its shared values. There is no cause to rejoice in the face of the current debate: it is certainly not the relevant exercise…
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Another year, another dead Canadian tech giant. Blackberry was sold yesterday for scrap to the Toronto private equity firm Fairfax. The purchase price of $4.7 billion is essentially valued at its cash of $2.6 billion and the value of its patents. Blackberry’s active businesses are essentially being valued at nothing. If…
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This is an experiment. I’m writing an essay based on my latest Metro Morning column. Each of these columns take hours of prep, so I thought I’d convert it into prose to see if it’s worth it. Would love your feedback. The rise and fall (and rise?) of Blackberry is a…
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As the referendum on whether to privatize Regina’s wastewater plant nears, the Regina Leader-Post is printing a column a day advocating the P3: John Gormley on Friday, Bruce Johnstone on Saturday, and Murray Mandryk yesterday. Johnstone and Mandryk repeat three of the City’s key claims. Gormley only gets to one…
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Regina is engaged in a controversial debate about a proposed public private partnership (P3) for the city’s wastewater plant. Residents formed a Regina Water Watch group to keep the facility public. They collected enough names to take the issue to a municipal referendum on September 25th, despite attempts by the…
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This piece was first published in the Globe and Mail’s Economy Lab. Five years after a global economic crisis unleashed chaos on markets everywhere, income inequality has become an inescapable political and economic issue, in Canada as elsewhere. That’s because of mounting evidence that the increasingly skewed distribution of gains from economic…
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Ever since the Lac-Mégantic tragedy, there’s a question which constantly comes up with regards to oil transportation. Are we better off transporting oil by rail or using pipelines? That’s in fact a red herring. All the projected pipelines announced by the Canadian oil industry would be insufficient to transport all…
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It seems all that fuss being kicked up about tuition fees rising faster than inflation, significant levels of student debt, dismal employment prospects for young people, and parents having to postpone retirement to help shoulder some of the burden under which their kids are struggling has not gone unnoticed. As…
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