We profile five legislative initiatives that died on the docket—and find out which of them will be re-attempted after the election Compiled by Dylan C. Robertson & Victoria Salvas This election means death. Not only have Ottawa scrums, filibusters, and drawn-out committees been killed, pieces of legislation making their way through parliament have all met […] More »
So there’s this scandal: Bruce Carson, a former adviser to Stephen Harper’s prime minister’s office, allegedly claimed ties to the PMO in order to move forward a deal with an Ottawa company that would provide water filtration systems to First Nations communities. This deal would mean a handsome payout to an employee of that company—who […] More »
Changes to the government’s food subsidy program are making some in Northern Canada fear higher prices and fewer small, local stores. The Food Mail Program was axed last October, to be replaced by a redesigned initiative in April 2011. The program, jointly run by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Canada Post, and Health Canada, provided food […] More »
Metis National Council president Clément Chartier Today we’ve got a new entry in the Verbatim series, the transcripts we provide of our Listen to This podcast. (Just a reminder that you can catch new, original interviews every other Monday—you can subscribe with any podcast listening program by grabbing the podcast rss feed, or easily subscribing […] More »
1. Mental health, depression, and suicide are rampant We all know that prisons are too often warehouses for those amongst us suffering addictions or mental health problems. The actual numbers, however, are harrowing. In federal penitentiaries 11% of prisoners have some sort of mental health diagnosis and 21.3% take prescription anti-psychotics on admission. Almost 15% […] More »
UPDATE: Wednesday, July 28, 12:14 — The Council of Canadians reports that the United Nations general assembly has voted in favour of the resolution to recognize water and sanitation as basic human rights. The still-unofficial vote count was 124 votes in favour, zero votes against, and 42 abstentions. We’ll update with the official vote when […] More »
Have you been stuck inside working all week? Don’t worry, you haven’t missed much—just the largest and most disruptive set of mobilizations Toronto has seen in quite some time. The Toronto Community Mobilization Network spent six months coordinating with various groups to create Themed Days of Action, which took place between June 21 and June […] More »
While the prime minister has been trying to do damage control for his G20 agenda, activists and organizers of all stripes have been busy building social justice movements. Sometimes movement-building involves bickering over listservs about who gets to the carry the banner, but sometimes it also involves holding massive, multi-day, multi-issue summits. Left Forum might […] More »
Unless you have been living under a fake rock beside a fake lake, chances are you’ve heard about this G8/G20 business in some way, shape, or form. The reasons why many people are protesting, however, may not be as clear. That’s probably because there isn’t any single issue uniting all protesters. And, despite what you […] More »
[Editor’s note: Alixandra Gould is attending the 2010 Canadian Water Summit on Thursday, June 17. In advance of that, she interviewed a few of the experts who will be speaking at the event about some of the key issues in current Canadian water policy. Today we bring you her report on the sorry state of […] More »
Today in Verbatim, This contributing editor Andrew Wallace interviews Dave Zirin, sports editor of U.S. progressive weekly The Nation and host of Edgeofsports.com, a blog and radio show that examines the collision of politics and sports. He’s the author of several canonical books on that topic, most recently of A People’s History of Sports in the United States, […] More »