As Green Party Leader Elizabeth May prepared for the upcoming federal election, she realized she had a shortcoming: managing inevitable smear campaigns from opposing parties. Earlier in her career, May had told a group of Ontario nuns that she’d talked women out of abortions, and it raised questions about where the Green Party stood on […] More »

Driving back and forth along Wellesley Street in Toronto, Iris looks for a sign that she belongs. It’s late at night and raining, and she’s been blown off by a date. The woman she met on the dating website Plenty of Fish lives in Niagara Falls, and Iris rented a car for the weekend to […] More »

In the five years that I’ve lived in Toronto, many of my phone conversations have started the same way: “Are you calling me from Saskatchewan?” the person on the other end will ask after seeing my caller ID. No, I tell them, I kept my Saskatchewan number because I can’t get a phone plan anywhere […] More »

On the campaign trail, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau heartily assured supporters of his commitment to reform Canada’s electoral system and “make every vote count.” Once in office, though, Trudeau’s enthusiasm fizzled out and no legislation was pushed through Parliament. Nonetheless, the Liberal government introduced Bill C-76 this April, which aims to overhaul the current Canada […] More »

Hilary Black is tired. “Really fucking tired,” actually, she says. She’s been doing this—fighting prohibition, advocating for the rights of medical cannabis patients—for 21 years. And now she’s at the outset of an entirely new chapter: She is in charge of the social responsibility and patient advocacy arm of Canopy Growth Corporation, one of the […] More »

The Trans Mountain Pipeline saga has been ongoing for years, but tensions peaked this May when Justin Trudeau announced his government’s plans to acquire the project for $4.5 billion. In 2013, energy infrastructure company Kinder Morgan proposed building a new pipeline to run parallel to the existing one, built in 1952. The proposal reignited ongoing […] More »

At Wascana Park in Regina sits a group of protesters, their teepees erected around them. They are waiting. Camped out just across from the Saskatchewan Legislature, the group wants justice after the deaths of Tina Fontaine and Colten Boushie, two Indigenous youth whose accused killers were acquitted of murder charges. The camp set up in […] More »

An overlooked aspect of recreational cannabis legalization in Canada is the privacy implications of the distribution systems, especially in the online environment. The privacy and security risks are substantial, and protecting the online rights of consumers needs more attention. Highly sensitive personal information will be exposed to the risks of redistribution and data breaches, and […] More »

Maxime Bernier, the 2017 Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) leadership runner-up, has announced he’s leaving the party to form a truly conservative alternative to Andrew Scheer’s CPC, which Bernier categorized as “intellectually and morally corrupt.” While it’s been clear since the May leadership contest that conflicts between Bernier and Scheer persisted—with Bernier removed from the […] More »

For the first time in the history of Canadian mental health, in 2017, the federal government announced an investment of $5 billion to improve access to nationwide services. The lump sum, which is part of the government’s Health Accord with the provinces and territories, is slated to roll out over the next 10 years. Mental […] More »

Thousands of federal offenders are serving life sentences in Canada’s justice system, and critics say they aren’t getting the rehabilitative support they need. “A life sentence is quite different from a traditional sentence,” explains Anita Desai, executive director of the St. Leonard’s Society of Canada. People serving life sentences, or “lifers,” often grapple with a […] More »