Issues, ethics, memory
Vancouver orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Brian Day is challenging a law that prohibits doctors from working in both the public and private health care systems simultaneously and extra billing their patients while they do so. Day did some boxing in his youth and now, bizarrely, he compares himself to the late Muhammad Ali as a kind of... Continue Reading →
Dear readers of Pulpit and Politics: Normally, I post my articles directly to my website, but in this case I am making a slight exception. Policy Options magazine has just published a piece that I wrote about the competing rhetorical styles being used by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election campaign.... Continue Reading →
In her nomination speech to the Democratic National Convention in July, former U.S. Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described her Methodist faith as the foundation of her activism. “[My mother] made sure I learned the words of our Methodist faith,” she said “‘Do all the good you can, for all the people you... Continue Reading →
As MPs headed back to their constituencies for the summer, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held a news conference in late June. Before submitting to questions from journalists, Trudeau talked about three promises kept since the Liberals won power in October 2015. They had, he said, delivered on a tax cut for middle-class Canadians and modified... Continue Reading →
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the premiers have appointed several task forces to propose ways in which Canada can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This action follows last December's Paris climate conference where leaders of 195 nations reached an accord committing them to lowering those although they did not say by exactly how much. The leaders' concern and their... Continue Reading →
It was early March in 1994 and minus 30 degrees in Regina, Saskatchewan. The prairies had endured a two-month deep freeze. I was awakened in my hotel room that Saturday morning by the growling sound of car motors turning over slowly, then dying, and the distinctive crunch that tires make on snow when it is... Continue Reading →
It’s been a year since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) released its report into the history and legacy of Indian residential schools. Yet most of us have probably read little more than snippets of it or none at all. Now, Duncan, B.C.-based writer Jennifer Manuel has created an online campaign asking Canadians to pledge... Continue Reading →
Stephen Harper has vanished from sight in the past six months but his Where’s Waldo status may be about to change. Harper will address the Conservative convention in Vancouver late in May. Recently he also spoke to Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson and other Republican super donors about how fractured political parties can unite. In... Continue Reading →
The current debate surrounding Bill C-14 — the legislation regarding medical assistance in dying — is a reminder of how Canada has become a more secular society in which organized religion plays a diminished role in public life. My own parents, both in their 50s, died within 16 months of one another in the 1970s. During... Continue Reading →
It has been 20 years since the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) issued a lengthy report calling for changes in the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, as well as governments across Canada. Not much happened as a result. But now, in the wake of a 2015 report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission ... Continue Reading →
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