This week Toronto city council will revisit the question of further garbage collection privatization despite evidence that suggests privatization politics don’t pass the sniff test. Right now, the west side of Toronto has garbage collection privatization while the east side remains under complete public control. According to research, the status quo…
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Month: January 2017
Where the press is truly free, and everyone is able to read, all is safe. —Thomas Jefferson. The brooding statue of Giordano Bruno in the Campo del Fiori in Rome attracts few tourists. Among those who do stop to look at it, fewer still know who Bruno was and why…
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With great fanfare and a claim that “Canada is back,” Prime Minister Trudeau helped usher in the Paris Agreement on climate change in December 2015. Since then, however, the federal government has pushed to expand fossil fuel production through new bitumen pipelines and LNG terminals. This contradiction points to a…
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On his first full day in office, Donald Trump made good on his pledge to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), effectively killing the deal. The administration then turned its sights on overhauling NAFTA, which may be more curse than blessing for Canada. Under NAFTA Article 2205, any party can…
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An estimated 3.2 million people turned out for Women’s Marches around the world on Saturday. The sea of protesters had barely arrived on the Washington Mall before the questions started: “Where will this protest movement go? Do they have a plan? Is this just a one-off event?” 3.2 million people…
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An Open Letter to the Nova Scotia Minister of Finance Today is the deadline for Nova Scotians to submit their ideas for this year’s provincial budget. This letter was sent along with our alternative budget as CCPA-NS’ ideas for what the government can and must do differently. Dear Minister Delorey;…
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A review of Beyond Banksters: Resisting the New Feudalism, by Joyce Nelson, Watershed Sentinel Books, 164 pages, $20.00 Over the course of my 70-plus years as a journalist, I’ve reviewed hundreds of books, many of them informative and educational. But Joyce Nelson’s Beyond Banksters, which I’ve just finished reading, is…
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The BBC once told the story of Wang Lai Ming, who decided to change his name to Terence King when he emigrated to New Zealand so it would be easier for him to find a job. It was a sad reminder that, in many countries, immigrants have trouble entering the…
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As with most of Donald Trump’s policy ideas, details are still sparse on his plan for rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure. But two main pillars of the plan, outlined during the election campaign, stand out. First, he’s talking a big game – a proposed $1 trillion in infrastructure investment to be…
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Canada may have ended 2016 with a surprising spurt in job growth last December, but Ontario was not so lucky. Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey ushered in employment numbers for the last month of 2016, showing Canada added 214,000 jobs since December 2015 — much higher than expected. Unfortunately, most…
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