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 »

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced on January 26 that he was going to use Canada’s Group of Eight presidency to push for an annual G8 summit agenda focused on women’s and children’s health. Former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis said it best when he called the announcement an act of “chutzpah.” […] More »

Who knew our federal government liked acting so much?  We had our debut on the world stage in the role of the antiquated and stubborn ‘Colossal Fossil’ with our less-then-stellar environmental track record and we are now preparing for our lead role as the evil Sheriff of Nottingham to the world’s Robin Hood tax.  It’s […] More »

The May-June 2010 issue of This Magazine has been on newsstands for a while already, so I apologize that I’m a little late to the party blogging about what you can read in this issue. You can find This in quality bookstores coast to coast, or get every issue without making a special trip by […] More »

Britain’s five days of post-election limbo are over as David Cameron, Conservative Party leader and now Prime Minister, announced Britain’s first peacetime coalition government since the 1930s.  Ushering in an era of cross-bench unity, Cameron’s Conservatives will join forces with Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democratic Party.  Cameron has appointed six Liberal Democrats to the cabinet, including […] More »

Today, which is, appropriately, World Press Freedom Day, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression released their first in what will be an annual series of reports on the state of free expression in Canada. As the authors note in the introduction, 2009 was a notable year in Canadian press freedom: The Supreme Court of Canada established […] More »

The more things change, the more they stay the same. This certainly rings true in the world of health policy: there’s a lot of talk, and the idea of change or reform is nice to think about, regardless of whether it ever happens. Recently, it seems that absolutely nothing is changing at all. Because for […] More »

…On analysing the evidence before it and the precedents, the Chair cannot but conclude that the Government`s failure to comply with the Order of December 10, 2009 constitutes prima facie a question of privilege. […] I will allow House Leaders, Ministers and party critics time to suggest some way of resolving the impasse for it […] More »

We’re kicking off our usual spring fundraising drive at This, and we’ve got a special treat this year. If you donate $100 or more, we’ll send you a copy of Rogue Stimulus: The Stephen Harper Holiday Anthology for a Prorogued Parliament as a thank-you gift from us to you. Edited by Stephen Brockwell and This […] More »

From the Afghan Detainee torture scandal to the Helena Guergis Magical Mystery Police Adventure, governmental transparency is at a dangerously low ebb and risks being “totally obliterated,” says the interim access-to-information commissioner Suzanne Legault. Her report, released yesterday, gave low ratings to 13 out of 24 government institutions on their compliance with requests for information, […] More »

For the past six months, opposition parties in Ottawa and in Quebec City have been persistently calling for the appointment of Royal Commissions. At the federal level, the demand has been for an impartial inquiry into the fate of detainees that Canadian troops turned over to local authorities in Afghanistan, and whether or not the […] More »