Issues, ethics, memory
Truth, as the saying goes, is the first casualty of war. There is no war in Ukraine yet, but the potentially violent standoff has been accompanied by an inflated war of words, which includes no small measure of hypocrisy on all sides. In Canada, both Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird and Prime Minister Stephen Harper have compared Russia... Continue Reading →
The Manning Centre’s annual Ottawa-based gathering of Conservatives has come and gone for another year. Reform Party founder Preston Manning and his wife Sandra created the organization in 2006 to act as a training ground for Conservatives to win in politics. This year’s event featured the usual array of Conservative politicians and operatives from right... Continue Reading →
In November 2013, people in Switzerland voted in a referendum on something called the 1:12 Initiative for Fair Pay. Under that proposal no one in a Swiss company would earn more in a single month than someone else in that company earns in an entire year. Corporate spokespersons in Switzerland and some in government warned... Continue Reading →
The long war in Afghanistan has receded from our attention, but as we prepare to pull our last troops out the media spin cycle has been renewed due to an article published in the Canadian Military Journal (CMJ) by Sean Maloney. He teaches at the Royal Military College of Canada and is an historical advisor... Continue Reading →
Some people believe that Edward Snowden is a traitor and would haul him into a U.S. court if they could get their hands on him. However, countless others believe that Snowden, a young technician who exited the National Security Agency (NSA) with a mountain of data, is a hero in the tradition of Daniel Ellsberg,... Continue Reading →
Stephen Harper has returned from a feel-good trip to Israel on which he was accompanied by an entourage of 208 people, largely at government expense -- cabinet ministers, MPs, Senators, rabbis, officials from Jewish groups, evangelical Christians, business people and various others. There has been much speculation about whether this was a trip based on... Continue Reading →
When a male student at York University recently requested — for religious reasons — that he be excused from interacting with female classmates, it led to an intense debate over competing rights and religious accommodation. The school’s sociology professor, Paul Grayson, denied the request because he says it infringed upon the rights of his female students... Continue Reading →
In 2011, the Canadian Press reported that the RCMP security service spied on CCF-NDP icon Tommy Douglas from the 1930s until shortly before he died in 1986. But the file on Douglas represented just a tip of the proverbial iceberg, as the McDonald Commission into RCMP misbehaviour revealed that in the 1970s, the security service maintained files... Continue Reading →
Dennis Gruending writes about a community Christmas concert in his 1950s farming village in Saskatchewan.
Nelson Mandela is being remembered as a beacon for democracy, peace and decency in political life. But he also used his retirement well. In 2007, Mandela and a group of distinguished individuals created a group called, The Elders. They included Mozambican humanitarian and politician Graca Machel, who is also Mandela’s widow; former Ireland President Mary Robinson;... Continue Reading →
Pulpit and Politics 