When I returned from China over the summer, having worked there for a year and a half, people would ask me, “What was it like?” And I, like a child trying to verbalize their first lofty idea, was sort of tongue-tied. There are over a billion individual perspectives in the country, yet only one autocratic […] More »
The Five Eyes! The Communications Security Establishment of Canada (CSEC)! The Olympia spying program! The Advanced Network Tradecraft! These seem like names lifted from espionage paperbacks, the kind with shiny embossed covers bearing some hyper-masculine pen name like Dick Richter. But, sadly, they aren’t the stuff of fiction. Slides were leaked last week that implicate […] More »
“The protesters should fall in love with hard and patient work – they are the beginning, not the end. Their basic message is: the taboo is broken; we do not live in the best possible world; we are allowed, obliged even, to think about alternatives.” -Slavoj Zizek As we all move slowly into the second […] More »
Stephen Harper began his eighth annual Northern Tour August 18, accompanied by his wife, Laureen, and a gaggle of ministers. The tour launched Sunday as the prime minister and his entourage landed in Whitehorse, where Harper spoke at a Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) BBQ and attended an afternoon picnic in Miles Canyon. In his […] More »
Recent changes to the policing of Canada’s controversial Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) have some Canadians questioning the safety of their civil liberties. The changes allow agents of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC), the branch of government in charge of the program, to enter the premises of any business employing TFWs and search […] More »
Transgender candidates are running for office for the first time in the country’s history. In this country? God no (com’on—Canada just passed legislation allowing trans people to use the public washroom of their choice)—they’re running for office in Pakistan. Turns out the developing country has Canada beat when it comes to certain gender rights. Here—and […] More »
On Tuesday, the UN agreed to set some standards on the 70 billion dollar arms trade. Right now, weapons-trading is an unregulated business, where illicit dealing gets lost in the same grey market as government trading. But with the first ever global arms trade treaty (ATT), that’s about to change. Theoretically, the treaty will stop […] More »
A public opinion survey released earlier this month shows that 67 per cent of Alaskans think gay couples deserve some form of legal recognition. So, in a meeting of the Alaska House Majority Caucus February 15, Mark Miller, a reporter for the Juneau Empire newspaper, asked, “would the caucus support the idea of having domestic […] More »
American politics have always been of serious interest for Canadians. Not only does the American President affect Canadian politics and procedures, but American elections are also just a heck of a lot more interesting to watch than our own. There’s something incredibly exciting about sitting around with your friends and watching the votes come in, […] More »
Noah Richler is the author of What We Talk About When We Talk About War (Goose Lane, 2012), a Governor-General’s Award non-fiction finalist. On November 5, 2012, Richler will join Jack Granatstein in Vancouver for a debate about whether or not Canada is a “warrior nation.” This magazine news columns editor andrea bennett interviewed Richler […] More »
Canada had a long history of satirical interventions in political discourse decades before the Tell Vic Everything campaign had Twitter users drowning Public Safety Minister Vic Toews in minute details of their everyday lives. In its heydays in the 1960s through to the early ’90s, the Rhinoceros Party fronted several political candidates who ran on […] More »