August 23, 2010
26 million hectares of forest, $17 billion, and one lonely bush pilot
For years, Joel Theriault has waged a losing battle against pesticide spraying in Northern Ontario forests. He’s made enemies in the logging business, the Ministry of Natural Resources—and even among his fellow environmentalists. What keeps him going? Illustration by Dushan Milic On a chilly afternoon in mid-June 2009, bush-pilot-turned-environmental-activist Joel Theriault is once again flying... [More >>]
August 3, 2010
As green-collar jobs boom, Canada is mired in the tar sands
Canada and Abu Dhabi share one big trait: an economy addicted to oil. But while Canada doubles down on the tar sands, the emirate quietly plans a renewable energy hub in a gleaming zero-emissions city in the desert. Can either of these bets pay off? Artist's rendering of a Masdar public square. Click to enlarge. Looking out over the site of Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, it takes some imagination to... [More >>]
July 28, 2010
Harper’s parliamentary reforms could solve some problems—and cause others
Over the years, governments have tinkered with the parliamentary rules set by the Charlottetown conference, pictured here. The Harper government has placed a bill before Parliament that would alter the formula for how seats are redistributed following the census. It would give Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia more seats in the House of Commons; naturally, Quebec and the Atlantic Canadian provinces... [More >>]
July 21, 2010
British coalition preps for 2011 voting reform referendum
Previously in our special week on electoral reform: Parliament needs women and proportional representation is the solution (to which this article was a sidebar); and our interview with Judy Rebick. Electoral reform is on the agenda in the U.K. following the May election that saw the creation of the first British coalition government in more than 60 years. As his price for joining David Cameron’s... [More >>]
July 20, 2010
Q&A with Judy Rebick: “We have one of the least democratic systems in the world”
Illustration by Antony Hare The recent U.K. election has raised the issue of electoral reform there, as the Liberal Democratic party made it a condition for propping up the Conservative government. This spoke to social activist Judy Rebick, who is a member of Fair Vote Canada, about her group’s campaign to bring some form of proportional representation to Canada. This: What’s wrong with our current... [More >>]
July 19, 2010
Another reason for voting reform: Parliament needs women
Canada has shockingly few female legislators. Our electoral system is broken. Voting reform could fix both problems at once. One Thursday last spring, an Angolan MP named Faustina Fernandes Inglês de Almeida Alves addressed an assembly at United Nations Headquarters in New York City. Those present—members of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the UN Division for the Advancement of Women, professors,... [More >>]
June 15, 2010
How bad science stifles rational debate about wind power
Stormy weather: pro-wind campaigns suffer from a lack of good, freely available data. Wind energy ought to be a shoo-in. Yes, the infrastructure costs a lot of money but the fuel is free and plentiful, turbines produce no emissions, and no mountaintops need to be removed. And unlike nuclear power, no long-term radioactive waste needs to be stored for millennia. Yet, bizarrely, small groups of committed... [More >>]
June 1, 2010
Strapped for funds, Yellowknife’s prison has become a mental health ward
With just one overworked psychiatrist for the whole territory, the North Slave Correctional Centre has become a de facto psychiatric hospital. Stuck in legal limbo, dozens of prisoners wait—and then wait some more—for justice Inside Yellowknife’s courthouse, behind the plastic shield of the prisoner’s docket, Tommy is plucking his fingers: one, two, three, four, from pointer to pinky and... [More >>]
May 31, 2010
What Stephen Harper should really do to support global maternal health
G8 Leaders meet in L'Aquila, Italy, July 8, 2009. Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced on January 26 that he was going to use Canada’s Group of Eight presidency to push for an annual G8 summit agenda focused on women’s and children’s health. Former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis said it best when he called the announcement an act of “chutzpah.” First of all,... [More >>]
May 27, 2010
Pro-pot lawyer Alan Young preps to fight the next round of drug laws
Creative Commons photo by Flickr user Neeta Lind. “This is about the complete failure of democracy,” Alan Young says, munching on his strawberry-jam toast at Sunnybrook Restaurant in Toronto. Young, a criminal lawyer, has been Canada’s forerunning pot reformist since he got a judge to declare that “marijuana is relatively harmless compared to the so-called hard drugs, and including tobacco... [More >>]
