With today’s edition of Verbatim, we’ve got This Magazine associate editor Nick Taylor-Vaisey in conversation with Liberal Party critic for International Cooperation Glen Pearson. You can hear the original podcast of this conversation, as always, on the podcast blog. Nick and Glen discuss Canada’s humanitarian commitments past, present, and future, ranging from Darfur to Afghanistan […] More »

In all the hoopla following the New Orleans Saints’ momentous victory over the Indianapolis Colts in last week’s Super Bowl, an important piece of the biggest day in North American sports seemed to disappear all-too-quickly from the collective consciousness. With the pervasive and nauseating hyperbole around the significance of the Saints’ win in Hurricane Katrina’s […] More »

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission announced today new rules for how internet service providers are allowed to monitor, control, and throttle your internet access. After years of ponderous thought on the issue of how much control ISPs can wield over their customers’ web access, the CRTC has ceded the issue to the internet providers […] More »

The rules for dating haven’t changed much in the last 60 years, according to the U.S. government. Dating, when done properly, leads to marriage and babies. The website Two Of Us promotes marriage as “a viable option to 18 to 30-year-olds” and is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the […] More »

Let me get this straight: The United States finally elects a credible president; moves to enact more humane health care policies; attempts to rein in its legions of lunatic financiers; and gets a clue on climate change. Meanwhile, Canada chugs along with its boring-but-stable banks and an imperfect but respected single-payer healthcare system. And we’re […] More »

If you missed the Daily Show this week, on Wednesday it offered a kind of condensed, sweetened version of the current political moment in the U.S., a methodical and droll demolition of the out-and-out insanity that has gripped the American right. In the segment—which, by the way, earns every ounce of smugness it exudes—the archives […] More »

[This is the first in a three-part series on the Alberta tar sands. Also note: EcoChamber will be moving to Mondays starting today.] There is a sense of progress in the air. For the first time in over a decade, G8 countries and developing nations, including China and India, have agreed to reduce their emissions […] More »

At Obama’s inaugural news conference last night, the President answered questions including a direct question by Helen Thomas, the most senior member of the White House press corps about nuclear arms in the Middle East (The woman was no doubt a thorn in Dubya’s side, calling Bush the “worst president in American history.” She has […] More »

I’d really like to write something clever about Obama and the Middle East. I’d love to comment on his commitment to end the war in Iraq, his appointment of Richard Holbrooke and George Mitchell as his special envoy to Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Middle East, or even his reiteration of the right for Israel to […] More »

CNN’s coverage of the Presidential election included some interesting segments: hologram interviews. You might have seen reporter Jessica Yellin and, later, Will.I.Am in hologram form being interviewed by Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper respectively. If you haven’t already, here they are: Here’s the thing though, they weren’t actually holograms. From the CBC: “The CNN anchors […] More »

Now that the Canadian election has ended with a whimper, all eyes are back on the US, where the latest polls are showing that the next President will likely be Barack Obama. Some progressives have whipped themselves into a giddy frenzy at the possibility. I am not one of them. Obama, to sum up, is […] More »