Search results for “site/human rights”

  • End of a painful era

    The longest election in Canadian memory has produced a new government and a decisive end to the Harper era. The reasons are not especially complicated: Canadians demanded change in Ottawa, and an end to the “politics of fear and divisiveness,” as Liberal leader Justin Trudeau told us repeatedly along the…

  • 5 ways the Harper government changed Canada

    I’m not going to lie: this is click bait. What I’d really like you to do is read all 434 pages of the new CCPA book The Harper Record 2008-2015, which I co-edited with Teresa Healy, available for free download. But as this is asking quite a bit at the…

  • New voices in support of a BC poverty reduction plan

    Two important new voices joined the call for a BC poverty reduction plan in the last couple days. First, on Tuesday, BC Provincial Health Officer Perry Kendall released a special report entitled Investing in Prevention. The report received quite a lot of media attention. However, most of the coverage dealt…

  • October 2002: The Ravaging of Africa

    Western neo-colonialism fuels wars, plundering of resources The G8 Summit held in Kananaskis in June, pledged $6 billion dollars a year in so-called aid to Africa by 2006. The low figure caused Phil Twyford of Oxfam to say “We’re extremely disappointed by this wasted opportunity. They’re offering peanuts to Africa…

  • Saskatchewan labour laws violate Charter: Study

    READ THE FULL REPORT HERE. Regina — The Saskatchewan office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is releasing University of Regina business administration professor S. Muthu’s study, Restoring the Bargain: Contesting the Constitutionality of the Amendments to the Saskatchewan Trade Union Act, a thorough analysis of the constitutionality of…

  • Pipeline politics and the 2015 election

    In early 2012, then Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver dropped a bombshell on BC. He asserted that Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline was in the national interest, but, he warned, environmental and other radical groups were undermining this effort to diversify Canada’s export markets.If anything, Oliver’s letter only inflamed opposition…

  • Climate change and the duty of professional engineers and geoscientists: A call to action

    There has been a great deal of recent media coverage both for and against the planned Trans Mountain pipeline expansion (TMX). Much of it is political, but of utmost importance are the ramifications for the planet. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has stated that the expansion’s approval was based on science,…

  • Paved with good intentions: A guide to evolving climate policies in BC

    The road to hell is paved with good intentions, an economics professor of mine used to say back in the late 1980s. Concerned about the federal government’s inability to reign in fiscal deficits, hell back then was hitting a “financial wall” where the markets would no longer lend or would…

  • Reaction to Chinese migrants exposes globalization’s double-standard

    Nothing lays bare more clearly the contradictions of free-market globalization than the hysterical and often ugly reaction to the arrival of the Chinese migrant ships on BC’s coast. Perhaps the recent Chinese arrivals are genuine convention refugees (a definite possibility given China’s human rights record), or perhaps they are mainly…

  • Public Interest Research Project (BC)

    Women paying price of legal services cutbacks

    CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL REPORT (Vancouver) As a result of legal aid cuts women are losing custody of their children, giving up valid legal rights to support, and being subjected to litigation harassment, according to a new report. It finds that women are paying a greater price for…

  • Do we need a business case for poverty reduction?

    I was reading up on poverty reduction policies and I came across a paragraph by Dalhousie University economics professor Lars Osberg that was just begging to be shared and discussed on PolicyNote:

  • Fast Facts: Réseau de santé « parallèle » : le loup dans la bergerie

    Cet article de Fast Facts a été publié le 19 février dans le Winnipeg Free Press. Presque en même temps, les médias parlaient du Rapport Castonguay au Québec. Ce rapport faisait suite à la décision rendue par une faible majorité en Cour suprême, l’année précédente, et qui ouvrait la voie…