A proposed open-pit mine to be run by Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold touched off protests early this month of 2,000 each in Santiago and Vallenar, near the mine site. From CorpWatch: “Barrick! Listen! Chile will not surrender!, No to Pascua Lama!,” roared a crowd of protestors as they paraded through the streets of Santiago, […] More »

I don’t know why anyone bothers blogging when there is Inkless Wells. Everytime Wells declares that he’s taking a break and that “blogging will be sporadic for a while,” he turns around and unleashes the best stuff anywhere. Today, he follows his rant against Harper with an annotated reply to one of his critics. Sometimes […] More »

Ever so quietly, the federal budget has been passed. I’m not a fan of the Liberals or their apparent behaviour in AdScam, but I’m pretty impressed with their resourcefulness; they found a little-used procedural motion to force through the budget late last night. Of course, it helps that this is a good budget for Canadians. […] More »

Regular readers of this blog might remember back in March a little investigative work by Andrew Potter revealed some problems with accountability in the Ethics Commissioner’s office. Seems the Sgro inquiry has taught the Ethics Commissioner a few things. Like it shouldn’t take seven months to find an office, hire a staff and make a […] More »

Creationists, please avert your eyes. News from the University of Alberta’s school of paleontology today that some of the earliest mammals had a lethally poisonous bite. From today’s Edmonton Journal, the fossil in question belonged to “Bisonalveus browni, a furry, insect-eating creature about the size of a mouse that lived in North America some 60 […] More »

I just wanted to take a moment to note Paul Wells’ recent advice to Stephen Harper. “Do something!” And then go back, way back to a blog posting I made about a month ago. Here’s me in the comments section later: But seriously folks, does anyone else think that those rumours about a “dump Harper” […] More »

I took my time this morning and went to get Live 8 tickets just now, but I’ve discovered that all of them were snapped up in 25 minutes! How disappointing. More »

UPDATE: Tabarrok is still clued out. If God suddenly appeared, all lighting bolts etc., the correct scientific reaction would not be “oh, I guess the theists were right all along.” It would be: “Gee, I wonder where God came from.” Again, if we can just accept the existence of organised complexity as a brute fact […] More »

Any day now the Fraser Institute will come out with its “news” that Tax Freedom Day — a device that is meant to show Canadians when they start “working for themselves” instead of the government — is just around the corner. This year, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has beat them to the punch […] More »

The Post today reports on a very interesting new study from the Bank of Nova Scotia, warning that the fiscal arrangements between Ottawa and the provinces are a total mess. No kidding. I haven’t read the actual study yet, but while some of it sounds a bit iffy (the Bank appears to endorse the notion […] More »

Parkdale-High Park MP Sarmite Bulte gives her party a pulse check because she thought it would be okay to NOT be in Ottawa all day when 15 confidence motions were on the schedule. In the end, she made a mad dash into Parliament, having missed some minor votes and just in time for the government […] More »