I didn’t really expect the 2021 Child and Family Poverty report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) to cheer me on a grey day, but I also didn’t expect it to be quite as bleak as it is. The report, by Dr. Lesley Frank, Laura Fisher and Dr.Read More

In other Innovacorp news, the US Securities and Exchange Commission has subpoenaed Meta Materials in connection with its merger with Torchlight Energy (with thanks to the spectator who alerted me to this development). Meta Materials was Innovacorp’s first “unicorn” investment — that is, its first portfolio company to list onRead More

Cruise news And now, from the “counterintuitive” department, I’d like to suggest that there are ways in which COVID may actually prove a boon to the cruise industry. It’s a theory I developed watching a “recovery of cruise” presentation from a November 2020 conference on “post-COVID” tourism in Cape BretonRead More

I don’t know when I realized that former Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi was a very different kind of politician — not only the first Muslim mayor of a major North American city, but one with some very progressive views. In an interesting and also entertaining interview with the host ofRead More

This year, 2021, marks the centenary of the first appearance in Canada and Britain of the red poppy as the official emblem of war remembrance: a single symbol of sacrifice that has dominated the rites and rhythms of November 11, Armistice Day, each year since. The idea of selling artificialRead More

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) in Nova Scotia has performed its annual public service of crunching the numbers to determine how much a worker must actually earn to live with some modicum of dignity in this province and the answer this year, for Cape Breton, is $18.45/hour. That’sRead More

Editor’s Note: This week, I’m focusing on the concerns that have been raised in Saint Lucia over Ben Cowan-Dewar’s latest golf development, Cabot Saint Lucia. First up: beach access.     Finola Jennings Clark says when she first heard that Cabot, the golf resort company founded by Torontonian Ben Cowan-DewarRead More

Editor’s note: This week, I’m focusing on the concerns that have been raised in Saint Lucia over Ben Cowan-Dewar’s golf resort, Cabot Saint Lucia. In this installment: water, archaeological and sustainability issues.   “Where open sea and land collide is where golf exists in its purest form,” is a BillRead More

Last October, in anticipation of a change of presidential administration in the United States, I interviewed Matt Korda of the Federation of American Scientists on the prospects for a progressive reformation of American foreign and defense policy . Korda expressed what I would characterize as ‘qualified pessimism’ about the potentialRead More

Does anyone go shopping for groceries these days without having at least one conversation with another shopper about the rising cost of what we are putting in our carts? Assuming, that is, we are among those who can continue to purchase the same items we have been using for years.Read More