Issues, ethics, memory
Public hearings are occurring for the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline that would transport crude oil from Alberta's oil sands to the northern British Columbia port of Kitimat. There the crude would be loaded onto oil tankers plying the B.C. coastal waterway and sent to China. There are billions of dollars at stake and the Prime... Continue Reading →
I was thinking over the Easter weekend of Father Bob Ogle, my late friend and political mentor. It was in April 1998 that he died at age 69 after more than a decade of serious illness. I wrote a brief piece about him for the Lives Lived section of the Globe and Mail and the... Continue Reading →
My recent book book Pulpit and Politics has been reviewed in the Clarion Journal of Spirituality and Justice, an on line publication. The reviewer is Ron Dart, a professor in the Department of Philosophy & Politics at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, B.C. You will see that he recommends the book and is pleased that it... Continue Reading →
Farmers fought long and hard to create the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool in 1924, but 88 years later the company, now known as Viterra, is being sold to a Swiss-based multinational called Glencore for $6.1 billion. This is a sad story, a kind of morality tale about the gradual destruction of self-help, local initiative, community control... Continue Reading →
It's taken awhile but Catholics and their leaders are beginning to protest against draconian cuts made by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace. The organization, created in the 1960s by Canada's Catholic bishops, has been a long-time partner in development in development with CIDA - but... Continue Reading →
Mike Flynn is a frustrated man. He is a former English sector director of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace (CCODP). He has more than 25 years of experience with voluntary organizations in the field of international development, social justice and public education. He lives in Montreal. He has responded to my recent... Continue Reading →
The hammer that had earlier landed on faith-based organizations such as KAIROS and the Mennonite Central Committee has now fallen on the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace (D&P). Michael Casey, D&P's executive director, has just written an emergency letter to the organization's local volunteer leaders in Catholic dioceses throughout the country. He informs... Continue Reading →
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Ottawa recently promoting a pre-emptive military attack upon Iran. He visited with his friend and close ally Stephen Harper prior to going to Washington in an attempt to pressure President Obama into supporting his doomsday scenario. Contenders for the Republican nomination were only too happy to beat the... Continue Reading →
When I was a CBC Radio host in the late 1980s, I bought title to one acre of cloud forest in Costa Rica for 25 dollars and then did an interview about it with someone from one of the environmental organizations supporting the project. Now, 25 years later, I may just have seen my acre... Continue Reading →
I received word on February 14 that my old friend father Andrew Britz had died of a heart attack in Saskatoon at age 71. I had known Andrew since the 1960s when I attended a boarding school run by the Benedictine monks at St. Peter’s Abbey near Humboldt, Saskatchewan. In the early 1980s Andrew... Continue Reading →
Pulpit and Politics 