Vancouver seems an unlikely place to nurture such a rustic troubadour as Dustin Bentall, but Canada seemed like an unlikely country to be the birthplace of artists like Rick Danko, Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel or Neil Young. If you look you’ll find as deep a frontier spirit and hard luck charm as any...

Canada and the European Union are currently negotiating a new free trade agreement called the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA). According to a detailed report prepared by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) Negotiating from Weakness, if CETA is implemented as currently written, Canada’s progressive...

Any cop, lawyer, judge or prosecutor knows that when you give in to blackmail, it’s not the end of the shakedown. Not by any means! Too bad the Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission never learned that lesson.It’s only a few months ago that the CRTC caved in to the demands of Canada’s private television...

As you may have noticed I haven’t been blogging much over the last couple of weeks. (Largely this is because I have been immersed in fighting the privatization of the local sewage treatment system). But in part it is the result of having some doubts about what the point is. I often say to people that the left – whatever that...

To date the Southeast Fire Centre has had 44 fires, which have burned 75 hectares. Of these 44 fires, 31 were person caused and the rest were caused by lightning. A few fires of note this season include: the 39 hectare fire that occurred on April 26 in the Lake Enid area (west of Wilmer), the 13.5 hectare fire in Wardner on...

 Is the world, including Canada, headed for the third great depression, as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argues? Watching the results of the G8/G20 meetings was like hearing news that a giant comet is heading for earth and we are just waiting for impact. Those meetings of the world's largest and/or growing...

Effective at noon July 5, 2010 all medium and large-sized open fires are prohibited within the Southeast Fire Centre’s jurisdiction to help prevent human-caused wildfires and protect public safety. Specifically this prohibits: Burning waste, slash or other material, whether piled or unpiled, that is larger than 0.5 metres in height or 0.5 metres in width. More […]

 It was bound to happen.  And it has.Serious questions have arisen about whether B.C. ambulance service cuts contributed to the death of a bull rider at a rodeo Friday.  And they must be answered.Makwala Derickson-Hall was severely injured when he was bucked and then trampled by a rodeo bull  at the Valemount Rodeo. He was ...

  Alex Atamanenko, MP for BC Southern Interior, has voiced his support for a parliamentary committee to look into allegations of police use of force and human rights abuses during the G-20 summit in Toronto in June. Vancouver–Kingsway New Democrat MP Don Davies has collected signatures from Liberal and Bloc Québécois MPs to force the recall […]

Last summer, Industry Canada held a series of nationwide consultations on copyright. It asked for input from consumers, industry experts and content developers on how best to modernize federal copyright legislation, which had not been reviewed since 1997. The result is Bill C-32, A Bill to Amend the Copyright Act, which was recently introduced in Parliament by Industry […]