Linda McQuaig is a journalist and author. Her most recent book is The Trouble with Billionaires, (co-authored with Neil Brooks).
This column originally appeared in The Toronto Star.
eMail: linda@lindamcquaig.com
Website: lindamcquaig.com
by Linda McQuaig
At the time, the transformation of the city’s downtown core into a pseudo war zone seemed like the worst aspect of the Harper government’s handling of the G20 summit in Toronto in June 2010. But perhaps just as insidious was Stephen Harper’s personal role at that summit in pushing the developed world to abandon stimulus spending and veer sharply towards austerity.
by Linda McQuaig
Perhaps the only thing more stunning than Alberta’s ruinous flooding has been the realization that not even a disaster of this magnitude, right in the heart of oil country, seems sufficient to break the torpor surrounding climate change. Indeed, federal and Alberta authorities seem undeterred in their dream of turning Canada into an energy superpower, even if it means immersing the country neck-deep in water. Continue reading »
by Linda McQuaig
For a guy forced to resign at the centre of a raging political storm, Nigel Wright has so far emerged largely unbruised.
by Linda McQuaig
Tuesday March 12
Dear Diary:
A little down time today at the office. Gives me a chance to catch up on my diary writing. Not much going on in the PMO these days. A trade deal with the Europeans. La-di-da! Review of Chinese takeovers. Dullsville! Pipelines for that muck Alberta tries to pass off as oil. What a snore! Oh, wait. There’s a call coming in from Mike Duffy. Gotta run.
by Linda McQuaig
The willingness of much of the Canadian media to go along with the Conservative narrative about Stephen Harper’s “moderation” has allowed the prime minister to wage a discreet class war against working people without attracting too much attention.
Canadians don’t like Harper’s anti-worker agenda — when they notice it. That’s why there’s been such a huge public outcry since the Temporary Foreign Worker Program was exposed as a mechanism by which the Harper government has flooded the country with hundreds of thousands of cheap foreign workers, thereby suppressing Canadian wages in the interests of helping corporations.
by Linda McQuaig
There is something almost quaint about the little ritual we go through every year at tax time.
Ordinary citizens diligently spend hours calculating their income and deductions and meticulously filling out forms, fearful of the probing eye and relentless reach of the tax man. At the same time, some of our richest citizens quietly park billions of dollars on faraway islands where the sun delightfully reaches but the tax man delightfully doesn’t.
by Linda McQuaig
Had Hugo Chavez followed the pattern of many Third World leaders and concentrated on siphoning off his nation’s wealth for personal gain, he would have attracted little attention or animosity in the West.
Instead, he did virtually the opposite — redirecting vast sums of national wealth to the swollen ranks of Venezuela’s poor, along with free health care and education. No wonder he alienated local elites, who are used to being first in line at the national trough.
by Linda McQuaig
Although much denigrated by the right these days, union activists are, as the old saying notes, “the people who brought you the weekend.”
The right apparently wants you to believe that the weekend is now out of date.
by Linda McQuaig
Those who believe we can freely trash the environment in our quest to make ourselves richer suffer from a serious delusion – a delusion which doesn’t appear to afflict aboriginal people.
by Linda McQuaig
Your shopping cart is currently empty.
This little notice popped onto my screen as I browsed the website of one of Canada’s biggest gun retailers, surveying the wide assortment of assault weapons it offers for sale online — including one virtually identical to the semi-automatic rifle used in last week’s horrific school slaughter in Connecticut.
