Issues, ethics, memory
I will be voting for the NDP in the federal election. They have historically advocated for policies that improve the lives of Canadians, and continue to do so. They have a group of ethical and hard working MPs, as well as stellar new candidates. The Liberals may well win the election, but we need the NDP with party status in parliament to provide an social justice presence .
Emmett Hall was the last Supreme Court of Canada judge to come from Saskatchewan. He was appointed at age 65, and served on the court from 1963 to 1973. He accomplished more after the age of retirement than most people do in a lifetime. He was a formidable judge and the royal commissioner who recommended Medicare for Canada. His long service had a profound impact on Canada.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has announced plan to move cataract surgeries from public hospitals to private clinics. He says people will continue to use their health cards and not their credit cards. I have recent experience which gives the lie to those claims.
Premier Doug Ford fired aal members of the Ontario COVID Science Advisory Table in the summer of 2021. Ford does not want expert advice to get in the way of his blatantly political decision making and short-term thinking.
Some believe that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese lab. Others insist it was an American lab. But a group of eighteen health scientists says that COVID-19 began in a market in the Chinese city of Huanan, where the virus spread from live animals to humans.
Medicare was born amid controversy in Saskatchewan in 1962, when most of the province's doctors went on strike rather than cooperate with a new government plan. Now, I have discovered that the RCMP believed it was all a communist plot and so they spied upon Medicare's proponents. Talking about being on the wrong side of history.
I sat beside my six-year-old grandson as he endured online classes in grade one during the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak in 2021. It was not a pleasant experience for him. Nor was it a picnic for me, hovering just off screen. But I was pleased to accompany him.
It is difficult to be in leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some politicians, including B.C.’s John Horgan, have high approval ratings. Others, notably, Alberta premier Jason Kenney and Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe have failed dismally in their tasks, and Kenney especially is paying for it in sinking popularity. Which brings us to Ontario’s premier Doug Ford.... Continue Reading →
Stacked chairs at En Route centre, March 20, 2020 There is talk among many Canadians, as well there should be, about a just recovery arising from COVID-19. The pandemic has shone a harsh light upon injustices that have been hiding in plain sight and there is no excuse now for looking the other way. Here... Continue Reading →
On March 8, 2020, Canada reported its first death from COVID-19. On March 11, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic. Like many people, we had heard increasingly disturbing news, but it did not seem quite real. Declaration of the pandemic got our attention. Two months later, I looked back to see how the pandemic shifted from far away news to something that changed our lives.
Pulpit and Politics 