Search results for “site/Pat Armstrong”

  • The Swiss origins of the U.S.–Canada aluminum fight

    The aluminum spat between the United States and Canada, as urgent as it seemed a few weeks ago, will have faded from most people’s minds by now. On September 15, mere hours before Ottawa was set to identify retaliatory measures, the U.S. announced it would drop the 10% tariffs on…

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    BC Labour Code amendments: A foundation to strengthen worker rights?

    The first comprehensive review of BC’s Labour Code in over a quarter of a century has resulted in changes to the law to strengthen protections and collective bargaining rights for workers. In addition to requiring a review of the Code every five years, the changes will: Strengthen successorship rights for workers…

  • An Open Letter to Margaret Wente

    We need to think more analytically about harm reduction This is an updated form of a letter I sent to Globe & Mail columnist Margaret Wente in response to her attacks on Vancouver’s harm reduction program. Her first four columns on this topic appeared in the Globe and Mail in…

  • Memo to northeast BC: More fracking earthquakes ahead

    Of the many “unknowns” flagged in a recent science panel report, few are as disturbing as the finding that no one can say how destructive an earthquake may one day be triggered during brute-force oil and gas industry fracking operations. The panel’s report—commissioned by Michelle Mungall, BC’s Minister of Energy,…

  • Fast Facts: Building a community of opportunity and hope

    Lord Selkirk Park Recent events in Gilbert Park have cast Winnipeg’s North End public housing complexes in a negative light. An opposition politician has called Gilbert Park a “ghetto” and “crime incubator”. Some poverty ‘experts’, in statements attributed to them by the media, have implied that conditions in public housing…

  • The Middle East Revolution (VI)

    The U.S. ramps up its counterrevolution in the Middle East While withdrawing 39,000 troops from Iraq, the U.S. recently made clear that it was increasing its forces in the Persian Gulf. A New York Times article — U.S. Planning Troop Buildup in Gulf After Exit from Iraq – reported that…

  • Temporary foreign workers need more rights, not better enforcement of flawed policy

    On June 20, Minister of Employment and Social Development Jason Kenney announced a raft of changes to the federal Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), including a moratorium (now lifted) on the hiring of temporary foreign workers (TFWs) in the food services sector. The TFWP program has attracted controversy since at…

  • Inside job: How BC Hydro customers wound up bankrolling private power companies

    The chickens have finally come home to roost on the previous BC government’s private power giveaway. The just-released provincial report by Ken Davidson on the costs of BC Hydro’s power purchases is a damning indictment of its electricity policies—policies whose exorbitant and wholly unnecessary costs will saddle BC ratepayers with…

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    False advertising by the Alberta government and oil lobby

    As an Alberta-born and -raised earth scientist who has made a career studying fossil fuels and energy issues, I am dismayed at the bombardment of ‘fake news’ in print, online and TV ads from the Alberta government on the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion (TMX). These ads are repeated hourly on…

  • Fast Facts: Do Social Mixing Policies Work?

    Does social mixing as public policy result in more equitable cities, more culturally diverse neighbourhoods, and less social marginalization?  These are some of the goals to which social mixing policies have aspired, but they have often fallen drastically short.  In some cases, social mixing policies have even been shown to…

  • Credit where credit is due: Financial literacy and the new Ontario math curriculum

    A new mathematics curriculum guide is set to drop this September in Ontario, the first update since 2005. Not only will students be heading back to the basics, they’ll also be introduced to a new “strand” of learning: financial literacy. The reason I’m so excited about this development is that…

  • Fast Facts: What the Frack is Happening in Manitoba

    Manitoba is poised to be a major Canadian player in providing large quantities of silica sand used in hydraulic fracking by the oil and gas industry.  This presents major risks that should be fully explored before allowing shovels into the ground. Canadian Premium Sand, a Canadian publicly traded company, is…