-The Expat- The Beginning I remember Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s first day in office. It was almost a decade ago, in what seemed to be an entirely different country than the one we live in today. It was a country where foul play could literally bring down a government; Paul Martin’s Liberals had just succumbed to…
-Jared Milne- Pipelines are a major political issue in Canada. Getting oil to market is seen as critical to Alberta’s economy. They are a high priority for Stephen Harper’s government, so why has there been so little progress on pipelines? Unfortunately, many of Ottawa’s actions have only damaged the oilsands’ image, and weakened public support…
The Canadian federal election is almost here (Monday, October 19). Information from Elections Canada on where and how to vote can be found here. At this point, the parties have laid out most of their platforms (see summary and links here), and the leaders have had several opportunities to debate each other (full replays of…
-Chris Logel- According to a 2013 OECD Report, Canadians pay some of the highest prices for some of the worst telecom services in the industrialized world. For example, for most data-only plans (used by iPads and tablets) Canada is one of the most expensive countries in the OECD; we’re lagging in 32nd place out of…
A paper recently came out in Comparative Sociology arguing that certain segments of Western society (college campuses, the blogosphere) may be experiencing the rise of a new type of moral culture (which they call ‘victimhood culture’) – one that has begun to compete with the previous dominant moral culture (one they call ‘dignity culture’) in our broader…
-Jared Milne- In commentaries about politics, the idea of the “mushy middle” is often used as an insult. It’s depicted as a weakness, as the person who straddles it is unable to decide on a firm set of beliefs, or who tries to please everyone instead of taking a strong stand. Similarly, compromise is seen…
Billionaire Donald Trump has stormed onto the scene of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. While his more politically seasoned competitors on both sides of the aisle are careful and scripted, Trump is, well, Trump. He’s wildly candid and bombastic, and swings – sometimes within the same sentence – between claiming to ‘love’ certain groups of…
Fisheries science is known for having several high-profile controversies; and there is a new one these days: ‘balanced harvesting’. At issue is whether or not we should shift towards a fisheries management philosophy that tries to spread fishing pressure across all sizes and species of fish in an ecosystem – harvesting each size and species in proportion to…
With first the advent of the 24-hour news cycle at the end of the last century, and now the rise of mass online news and social media, there is no doubt that so-called ‘media trials’ (where allegations of criminal or civil offences, or otherwise abhorrent behaviour, are played out in the media before or instead…
Reading about the crisis in Greece these past weeks has often reminded me of a 2010 book by Australian economist John Quiggin, provocatively titled Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us. If you haven’t read it yet, you should. In the book, Quiggin chronicles the ‘birth’, ‘life’, ‘death’, and ‘reanimation’ of several influential ideas in macroeconomics…
The Tête-à-Tête 