Search results for “site/Pat Armstrong”

  • Fast Facts: Rite of Passage

    Graduating from high school is a rite of passage, but for students at risk, high school can be an oppressive and intimidating place. Programs like the Gordon Bell Senior Off Campus program (GBSOC) however, offer an alternative to the mainstream school system, allowing students to work at their own pace,…

  • My Welfare Food Challenge: Day 7 – The End

    Well, I’ve made it to the end of my week eating only what I could buy for $26. But eating the same thing for breakfast, lunch and dinner for seven days is no damn fun. I can’t wait to eat something different and fresh. Did a final weigh-in this morning.…

  • December 2005: The Right to Privacy—A New Oxymoron?

    Our privacy shield is getting badly battered on every front Privacy is an extremely complex human value, but it boils down to the need and “right to be let alone”–to be free of unwarranted intrusions into our daily lives, 24/7. Think of privacy as a cultural and legal shield protecting…

  • Fast Facts: The Two Faces of Government Policy Towards Local Food

    Small farm owners Pam and Clint Cavers were blindsided on August 28, 2013 when Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives (MAFRI) staff showed up to “seize and destroy” their locally produced and cured prosciutto (pork). Ironically, just months ago, MAFRI presented the Cavers with $10,000, naming their prosciutto the “Best…

  • Trans-Pacific Partnership expands migrant worker regime: study

    READ THE FULL REPORT HERE. OTTAWA—As parliamentary consultations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) begin, a new study from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) raises questions about the deal’s consequences for Canadian immigration policy and the Canadian labour market. “The TPP gives employers a new pathway to hire and…

  • Lowering Our Standards

    The right-wing Fraser Institute has released a paper that, if implemented, would dramatically lower our standards for worker pay, workers’ rights and workplace protections. It urges governments in Ontario and B.C. to adopt American-style “right-to-work” (RTW) laws which violate a core principle upheld in Canadian law: if a majority of…

  • Debt, Austerity, and Devastation

    Creditors get fatter financially, their victims get thinner Like plague in the 14th century, the scourge of debt has gradually migrated from South to North. Our 21st-century plague isn’t spread by flea-infested rats, but by deadly, ideology-infested neoliberal fundamentalists. Once they had names like Thatcher or Reagan; now they sound…

  • Work Life: That’s What Unions Do

    Back in February, 2013, CCPA-Mb  put out a Fast Facts  titled Six Unions: One Voice1  which chronicled the many problems faced by staff at the University of Manitoba campus . We explained how an intense process of corporatization was negatively affecting all manner of University employees, from tenured professors to…

  • Canada’s looming forestry crisis

    People rarely get excited about bugs, except in summertime when mosquitoes swarm and thoughts turn to West Nile Virus. But there is plenty to get excited about when considering a certain beetle now overrunning British Columbia’s forests, a bug that is on a frightening flight path toward Canada’s cross-country, northern…

  • Gov’t investment in postsecondary education more than pays for itself: study

    CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL REPORT OTTAWA— Public investment in postsecondary education is paid back to governments in full and helps to reduce the financial risks taken on by students, says a new study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). The study, by economist and…

  • Future of Canada’s submarine program is in doubt, report finds

    CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL REPORT OTTAWA – A new report on the future of Canada’s submarine program has just been released by the Rideau Institute and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.  “That Sinking Feeling: Canada’s Submarine Program Springs a Leak” was written by University of British Columbia…

  • July 2005: Peak Oil and the End of Globalization

    U.S. dependence on oil drives its efforts to control what’s left When Paul Martin met with George Bush and Vicente Fox in Texas last March to chart further continental integration (while Martin’s neo-liberal competitor for the Liberal Party crown, John Manley, was pushing for even further subordination of Canada’s economic…