Articles tagged with: Canada
NDP’s Pat Martin gets SLAPPed in the face by RackNine
Of the all the absurd recriminations of the past week regarding the now infamous Harper government robocalls situation, my personal favourite was this: RackNine (the hucksters who operated call centres for several Conservative election campaigns, but which is not currently under investigation) is suing Pat Martin and the NDP…
The Conning Cons
The rapidly unfolding Robocall scandal is rocking our nation’s capital and has become the main issue in Canadian politics virtually overnight. The scandal started about a week ago when Elections Canada suspected a Conservative operative used automated calls to suppress the opposition vote in Guelph, Ontario. The operator known as “Pierrre Poutine” used the robocalls to falsely state to would be Liberal/NDP voters that their polling station had changed…
Anonymous’ Actions Amount to Blackmail
The message from Anonymous to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews was chillingly simple: scrap C-30 (the perversely titled Protection of Children Act designed to enable the government access to the IP addresses of the nation without so much as a court order) or else they will continue with even more scandalous revelations about the minister’s checkered personal life being made public. On February, 22nd, they released another video through YouTube where they revealed more details about Toews’ mistress…
Reflections on the Student Strike: How We Devalued Our Education While Raising Tuition
Access to free education ought to be a fundamental human right. Across Canada, students have almost free public education up to the end of the secondary cycle, with some provinces offering subsidized options for post-secondary studies. Because we are a consumerist nation…
Eco-Terrorists and Pedophiles – Welcome to the New Canada!
According to our Conservative Government, members of other Canadian political parties are pedophiles and environmentalists are terrorists…welcome to the new Canada. As unbelievable as it sounds, Public Safety Canada listed environmentalists among other “issue-based domestic extremists” that could pose a threat to Canadians…
Flag Day Reflections on Idealism and Avoiding World War III
On the surface it may seem like this planet’s current crop of ‘influential’ political leaders is deliberately trying to sabotage voluntary, collaborative societal evolution by placing draconian restrictions on freedom of doubt, freedom of criticism, freedom of assembly and expression, let alone the freedom to openly question, dissent and oppose the status quo. All over the world…
Operation #TellVicEverything – A Revolution, The Canadian Way
You know, a few months ago I wrote a parody article explaining Rebecca Black’s song Friday. It was rather well acclaimed. The lyrics to the song could very well end up being tweets from Canadians expressing their disgust at the new online privacy bill brought fourth by the Conservative government: “Hey Vic it’s 7am and I’m waking up in the morning.” “Hey Vic, now I’m going downstairs to have my bowl, I love cereal.” …
Flying While Transgender
Last week, the transgender blogosphere exploded in response to the July 29, 2011 changes to the Canadian Identity Screening Regulations. The focus of this attention was section 5.2 (1) of the regulation, which reads: “An air carrier shall not transport a passenger if [...] (c) the passenger does not appear to be of the gender indicated on the identification he or she presents.” The regulation is notable for two reasons…
Still My Body, Still My Choice: 21st century, indeed!
The official statement is that the Harper government has no intention of reopening the abortion debate. I acknowledge this off the bat, as it means that I officially have nothing to be worried, let alone seething about. So why am I feeling particularly proprietary on the subject of my ovum…
First Nations and the Supreme Court v. Enbridge and the Harper Government
With the debate over the Northern Gateway pipeline proposal heating up in Ottawa, and the likely scenario of some sort legal battle emerging, it might be time to look what the law, and in particular …
Caterpillar Crawls Away
The locked-out Electro-Motive plant in London, Ontario has decided to close the plant permanently. The announcement comes just over a month after Progress Rail decided to lockout its workers citing operating costs as its main motivation. Progress Rail Services Corp., a subsidiary of U.S. construction equipment conglomerate Caterpillar that owns the Electro-Motive plant had locked out its unionized workers on New Year’s Day…
Institutionalized Graft Part II
I’m not an accountant but I can’t believe that the cost of constructing a $5 billion bridge can be done without cost to the taxpayers. Where will the initial capital come from? Who will pay for the design, materials, salaries, equipment etc? The Tories have stated that an initially two-dollar toll will be collected and that will pay off the bridge “without cost to the taxpayer”…
SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, C11 and all the other letters and numbers they can throw at us be damned! The Net’s Not Gonna Change
To paraphrase Micheal Corleone’s only noteable line in Godfather III: “Just when we thought we were out, they pull us back in!” I had to paraphrase it because I wouldn’t dare embed the YouTube clip these days and am even a little skittish about a direct quote from such a heavily copyrighted film. Yes, we all know that SOPA and PIPA got shelved in the US, thanks in large part to sites like Wikipedia going dark for a day and showing everyone just what a heavily censored and regulated internet might be like. But that doesn’t mean they’re done for good…
Harper Kowtowing to US War on Drugs With Crime Bill
Why can’t this country do what so many others in the civilized world (i.e. California, Belgium, Holland, etc.) have done and stop this senseless and costly persecution of otherwise law abiding and tax-paying citizens for indulging in the odd puff of mother nature’s finest? Allow me to illustrate my personal crackpot conspiracy theory in the matter, by way of an analogy with the struggle of Canadian women for the right to choose an abortion…
The good, the bad and the ugly: The Trials of 2011 in Retrospect
I know that these year in review columns, annoying though they may be, are all the rage around New Years (apologies for the lateness). Also, that they remain a cheap way for hack journalists and bloggers to basically recycle the past years work while, at the same time, attempting to pass it off as new content. So, without further ado, here are my personal top Canadian legal highlights for the year 2011 (in no particular order)…
2011 Year-In-Review: News
With revolution in the streets from the Middle East to middle America, a major power shift in Ottawa and a smattering of other events that would have stolen the headlines in any other year, 2011 will be largely remembered as the year that got the ball rolling for the future, good or bad…
