U.S. and China’s rivalry over Africa’s riches intensifies In my report on France’s invasion of Mali published in the March issue of The Monitor, I wrote that, “According to U.K. journalist John Pilger, ‘A full-scale invasion of Africa is under way. The United States is deploying troops in 35 African…
David Green, Professor at the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia and Research Associate with the CCPA-BC, gave the eighth annual Rosenbluth lecture on October 3, 2019. David is heading up the BC government’s panel on basic income. His lecture was followed by three discussants who…
British Columbians no doubt feel thankful that the costs, security and other challenges facing the Sochi Winter Olympic Games far surpass what B.C. and Canada faced with the Vancouver-Whistler 2010 Games. But the 2010 Games were not without controversy and still raise the question of whether it was all worthwhile.…
Imagine you just got a new job. But instead of a permanent job for an indefinite period of time, you are told that this near-minimum wage job will last four weeks, but could end at any point without notice, and the exact hours per week are to be determined. Your…
Canadians everywhere have a new reason to thank the Supreme Court after a historic judgment on June 13 threw government spying plans into chaos. The justices ruled unanimously, in line with privacy officials and watchdogs, that warrantless government and police requests for disclosure of private online information are unconstitutional. The…
The Temporary Foreign Workers (TFW) program has become such a mess that its complete elimination for low-skilled occupations is now an active possibility. Business, for its part, is screaming bloody murder that the cancellation will force the shutdown of entire sectors. They claim even offering $100/hour or $180,000/year to serve coffee at Tim…
Some myths are just so hard to debunk. For instance, people in Québec generally assume that they are the most taxed in North America. IRIS tackled the well-rehearsed allegation in a recently published socio-economic notice. The reply resounded of what Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky have presented in Manufacturing Consent as flak.…
L’élimination de l’écart salarial entre les sexes transformerait notre monde pour le mieux, tant pour les hommes que pour les femmes. Imaginez avoir plus de temps pour faire ce que vous aimez, avec les gens qui vous sont chers. Imaginez avoir un travail sûr et décent dans une économie en…
Last year, the BC government introduced legislation expected to bring ride-hailing to the province, but many questions remain about what that will look like in practice. One of the bodies responsible for working out the policy details is BC’s Passenger Transportation Board (PTB), an independent tribunal that has been handling…
Opposition to U.S. drone attacks rises globally and in U.S. Joe Lombardo is co-coordinator of the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC), the largest anti-war coalition in the United States. He is also a founding member of Project Salaam, a group that helps Muslims persecuted (mainly by the government) in the…
Lighthizer, Guajardo and Freeland feeling the NAFTA love in April.For the past four weeks, NAFTA negotiators in Washington, D.C., have been working around the clock to reach an agreement in principle before the U.S. and Mexican electoral calendars sideline the Trump administration’s hopes for a speedy deal. Due to the…
Where does the Saskatchewan government stand on the privatization of provincial Crown corporations? You’d be hard pressed to come up with a definitive answer after the government’s partial privatization of Information Services Corporation (ISC), the introduction of new private liquor stores and Premier Wall’s end-of-year comments that privatization deserves a “rational, pragmatic…