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Why No One Should Vote On Human Rights

Monday, November 10th, 2008

In Canada, we have a fairly comprehensive Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In 2005, we added to this slate of protections the Civil Marriage Act which expands the definition of marriage to mean a “lawful union of two persons to the exclusion of all others”. Many provinces in Canada had already legalized same-sex marriage by [...]

How Governments and Corporations Buy Public Acceptance for Controversial Projects

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

It was announced yesterday that Donald Trump managed to ram through his beloved super-deluxe golf course project in an environmentally sensitive area - Balmedie Beach in Aberdeenshire on Scotland’s East Coast overlooking the North Sea. [READ] This project has caught my attention over the past few years as Trump fought it out with locals in [...]

Green Party Not Serious Part of Upcoming Federal Elections

Monday, September 8th, 2008

Under and hour ago, it was annouced that the Green Party of Canada would not be allowed to participate in scheduled, televised debates between Prime Ministerial candidates in October. This decision was made by a panel of five senior television broadcast editors but was backed by the NDP, Liberals and Conservative parties who said they [...]

Why We Should Care That Payphones Are Going Extinct

Friday, September 5th, 2008

While working in a public space at the University of British Columbia’s downtown Vancouver campus earlier this week, I was confronted by a very distraught young man who needed to find a payphone. He’d been looking for 20 minutes. I was in fact sitting where there had once been a payphone just six months prior. [...]

How to Reach Out to Your Stakeholders

Saturday, August 23rd, 2008

A lot of people don’t know this about me but before I became a consultant, I was a marketing/communications/public relations guy. Working with stakeholder groups was a big part of what I did for a living and when I did grad school at SFU, I even wrote my thesis on stakeholder engagement [READ]. Sometimes, for [...]

Rate of Black Market Cigarette Seizures Weaken Marijuana Legalization Arguments

Sunday, August 3rd, 2008

I have always been an unabashed opponent to the legalization of marijuana in Canada. I grew up next to a grow op as a child and I can tell you first-hand, smoking marijuana is not a victimless crime. Now that I’ve gotten that very controversial stance off my chest, I’d like to poke a hole [...]

UBC Prof Says No More Subsidies to Fisheries

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

This is going to be a controversial post. Feel free to send me hate mail. It’s just my opinion. I have been accused by the Left of being a Conservative. I have been accused by the Right of being a Commie. I am neither. I’m apolitical in many respects. As someone who works in policy [...]

BC Gas Tax to Start Tomorrow - So What?

Monday, June 30th, 2008

My wife got me panicked this morning because she said there was a “24 cent” per litre gas tax starting tomorrow. I said “WHAT?” and promptly got online to confirm. It’s actually 2.4 cents per litre. When I usually fill up, I put $50 in. A 2.4 cent per litre gas tax means I’m paying [...]

Dispatch from Prince George - The Oil Economy

Monday, June 9th, 2008

I’m sitting in hotel room in Prince George, BC and I’m bone tired from having driven 8 hours to get here. I was planning on writing about an interesting article I saw in the New York times on the wide-ranging impacts of oil price increases on consumer goods. However, my fatique levels will only allow [...]

Canadian Gov’t Considers Own Version of US’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

In the next two weeks, it is likely that the Canadian Minister for Industry, Jim Prentice will introduce a Canadian version of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This piece of legislation has been struck down in the past in Canada and has been very controversial in the US.
There are a number of problems with [...]

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