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 »

Former Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer was clocked doing 93 km/h in a 50 zone one evening last September. At the time, police charged him with impaired driving and cocaine possession. A few months go by, and—abracadabra!—the drunk-driving and the drug possession charges disappear, replaced by a guilty plea for “careless driving”: Crown attorney Marie Balogh […] More »

When the new study guide for immigrants applying for Canadian citizenship was published last November, a reporter asked Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney why there was no mention of Canada’s world-leading (but still-in-progress!) record on equal rights for gay and lesbian people. Here’s what Kenney said: “We can’t mention every legal decision, every policy […] More »

A group of American pediatricians think the hot dog needs a makeover. In a study released Monday, the team singled out the long tubular shape as the single highest choking hazard for small children and called out to the industry to redesign the Franken-meat. Now I get we need to me mindful of the food […] More »

First, mothers were warned to be watchful of their curious children around the potentially poisonous product; and now, store owners and homeless shelters are being urged to keep an eye out for clientele who may be abusing it. The culprit: common hand sanitizers, which have been saturating not only our hands, but also store shelves […] More »

The Olympic madness just keeps on rolling in Vancouver. It was just two weeks ago that the Vancouver Public Library was sending out helpful reminders to confiscate guest-speakers’ Telus jackets and cover Sony logos with electrical tape. But now the micromanagement has exploded to a whole new level. Vancouver city officials this week issued a […] More »

Haiti suffers its worst natural disaster in hundreds of years. An estimated 200,000 people are dead or missing. Aid agencies from around the globe rush to stem deadly post-quake effects like malnutrition and cholera. And U.S. evangelical group Knobs for Jesus Faith Comes by Hearing® in the U.S. sends what? A wind-up, solar-powered talking bible. […] More »

I was going to say that it looks like the Vancouver Public Library has drunk the Olympic Kool-Aid, but then, Kool-Aid maker Kraft Foods isn’t an Olympic sponsor, so in fact it must be some sort of Coca Cola product. But whatever it is, it’s inducing the crazy: VPL marketing and communications manager Jean Kavanagh […] More »

[This was meant to auto-post yesterday, but didn’t, for some reason. So it’s kind of “WTF Thursday” today…] Reporters sans frontières has now waded into the mire that is the lock-out of employees at Le Journal de Montréal. Unlike many public figures, who have thrown their hats in the union’s ring, RSF’s secretary-general, Jean-François Julliard, sided […] More »

We’ll all get older, and start to slow down. It’s just a fact of life. But in the Atlantic Provinces, the population as a whole is getting older, and that’s going to lead to tough times ahead unless the provincial and federal governments step-in and make some changes. A report released Monday by the C.D. […] More »

Some stories are sad, and some are crazy. This one is both. One of the four RCMP officers involved in the death of Robert Dziekanski in 2007 has now been arrested over a hit-and-run death two weekends ago, allegedly a drunk-driving collision. Orion Hutchinson, 21, was killed in a crash between his motorcycle and a […] More »