Canada urged to rethink Middle East sanctions that make daily life a struggle just to get daily bread
“Economic sanctions that afflict the poor must be lifted. I stress the word ‘poor,’” Archimandrite (head of a monastery) Georges Masri said in an e-mail from his home base in Syria. He was responding to my request for his views on the unfolding humanitarian crisis in his country, and whether sanctions have exacerbated it. “The…
His response to the Uyghur genocide motion stands out simply because it put all his hypocrisy on display at once
Political failures usually come in one of two flavours. The first are acts that expose a gap between reality and the stories politicians tell about themselves. Sometimes this occurs when a politician’s criminality is exposed. But much more often, it is the banal things that display glaring hypocrisy and enrage voters. Remember Bev Oda? I…
The RCI controversy shows CBC’s primary purpose is the acquisition – at the expense of private broadcasters – of audiences and money
An uprising backed by former prime minister Joe Clark and actor Donald Sutherland is trying to force the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. to hit pause on its plans to dismantle Radio Canada International (RCI). If successful, the move to save CBC’s once-vaunted service that took Canada to the world will throw a wrench into the CBC’s…
Any appearance of conflicts of interest must be eliminated
By Joel Lexchin, Lisa Bero, Marc-Andre Gagnon, Quinn Grundy and Barbara Mintzes COVID-19 vaccines are starting to come into Canada again and hopefully there won’t be any further interruptions. Public acceptance of vaccines will depend on how confident people are that the best decisions have been made about which vaccines to purchase. If it looks…
China is acting with the intent to destroy and they are leveraging the full weight of the government to do so
More than a million Uyghur men and women have been detained in a vast network of camps in northwestern China. The Communist state has acknowledged the existence of these camps, and claims they are used for the “re-education” of Uyghurs and other minorities. For years, the Chinese state has been destroying the graveyards and religious…
For years the media simply parroted Trudeau's contentions of transparency, rather than fact-checking his claims
Throughout 2016, new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his ministers claimed repeatedly they were changing the Cabinet appointment system to ensure it was “transparent, open and merit-based.” Very unfortunately, every media outlet reported the claims without checking whether they were true. At the beginning of 2017, the Liberals issued an announcement saying the changes had…
2021 perfect opportunity for the feds to demonstrate its commitment to a sector critical to the Canadian prosperity
If only the federal government would put its full force behind the energy sector, as it does other critical sectors in the economy. In early October, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he wouldn’t back down from the latest American round of attacks on Canada’s softwood lumber industry. Then, the federal government announced it would pursue…
Former Mountie Sean Murphy is calling for a Criminal Code amendment to protect conscientious objections to MAiD
Sean Murphy has what he considers a clear way through the tangle between the House of Commons and Senate over Liberal government legislation to expand Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD). The former veteran Mountie and coroner says the bill’s status would be clarified if all Canadians understood that MAiD means homicide. A logical outcome he…
Our speak softly and carry a limp stick approach has had no effect other than to embolden Communist China
For centuries, Arab states across North Africa made fortunes from piracy. Now in the 21st century, a new pirate state is taking prisoners and holding them for ransom. In the past, raiding the coasts of Spain and Italy, scouring the Mediterranean and ravaging into the Atlantic as far as Iceland, Barbary corsairs captured over a…
There’s only one way for Albertans to get a fair deal in Canada: fight for it
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made one thing clear: he’s not going to hand Alberta a fair deal on a silver platter. There’s only one way for Albertans to get a fair deal: fight for it. The next step in our fight for fairness is this year’s equalization referendum. The equalization referendum on Oct. 18…