When Ethiopia asked the world for food aid last October, former subsistence farmer Terefi Tekale was not among the 6.2 million people desperate for help. Though his family’s long-held plot in Ethiopia’s Konso region has done poorly in recent years—the soil is sterile, his corn stunted and his hillside eroded—an ambitious new development plan means […] More »

It’s been a tough couple of years for the shipping industry. First there was the recession, which led to almost 12 percent of the world’s cargo ships spending last December empty and anchored. The industry has also come under fire by environmentalists for its contributions to climate change and air pollution. At December’s Copenhagen summit, […] More »

The notion that a failure to plan is nothing more than a plan to fail is one of the more heavily trafficked pieces of common sense, but it appears that the baby boomers are exempt from its wisdom. Instead, it will be their children who will be forced to cover the costs associated with their […] More »

Progressive Canadians seldom get very excited whenever a Conservative government brings down a budget. More often than not, the priorities of the two groups are so wildly different that it’s almost not worth the effort to make a fuss. Last year’s budget was a different story. Stephen Harper’s team came up with a plan of […] More »

The five-ring circus has rolled out of Vancouver, but the tents are still up. Hundreds of red tents, which became as much a symbol of our 2010 Games as those maple leaf mittens, won’t be coming down until we get our housing legacy. That’s the pledge of Pivot Legal Society, the non-profit legal advocacy organization […] More »

The release of the federal budget yesterday brought few surprises, but plenty of opportunity for debate. With total spending this year of $280.5 billion, up $12.8 billion from last year, the government will run on a $49.2 billion deficit. The government hopes to curb that deficit by 2015 and bring up back to the black […] More »

I grew up in the Greater Toronto Area, home to the most diverse region in all of Canada, perhaps the world, in a Hong Kong immigrant household (caveat: my Man U-loving dad raised me on soccer). I’m intensely proud of that fact. So it ruffles my feathers that, hockey so often precludes all other events — […] More »

Progressive media, it seems, is one of the very few bright spots in today’s bleak world of journalism. Despite the cash-strapped economy, rather than succumbing to the heavy hand of advertisers or clinging to sensationalized coverage—as their corporate counterparts have been obliged to do—independent progressive media has managed to survive and flourish by simply sticking […] More »

This editorial appears in the March-April 2010 issue of This, which will be in subscribers‘ mailboxes and on newsstands next week. The earthquake that devastated Haiti on the afternoon of January 12, 2010, viscerally illustrated the need for responsible, long-term, sustainable development. For many thousands of Haitians, poverty must be considered the true cause of […] More »

If ever there was a conspiracy theory that had every likelihood of being true, it’s that a shadowy cabal of billionaires are meeting at some remote location in the Swiss Alps (perhaps the Hotel Mont Pelerin, or the latest Bilderberg stronghold) to plot how to most effectively screw the rest of the world. Michael Moore’s […] More »

It makes for safer driving in Canada, but the price is high Wintertime in Canada is sure to mean roads covered in snow, ice and salt. Here’s a look at the country’s de-icer of choice— how it’s good, how it’s bad, and what can be used instead. Click below to see the PDF full-screen: In […] More »