Features

Canada’s plan to get rich by trashing the environment

Mar 252013

Pipelines, exploration to increase annual emissions by 2020, creating giant carbon bootprint.

by Stephen Leahy

Like every other country in the world, Canada has promised to help keep global warming to less than 2 degrees C. However Canada's political and corporate leadership are committed to turning the country into a fossil-fuelled “energy superpower.” With a drug lord's just-providing-a-service hypocrisy Canada has openly declared it's future is tied to the profits from dumping hundreds of millions of tonnes of climate-heating carbon into the atmosphere every year.

And the world's new energy superpower plans to grow those annual emissions to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020, giving one of the least populated countries a gigantic carbon bootprint.

The case for pot decriminalization

Mar 252013

Features

The Young Turks discuss Maryland's proposal to change marijuana laws.

with Ana Kasparian and John Iadarola

A medical marijuana bill is advancing in the Maryland House, and may become law. One change would be to replace an arrest for being caught with pot to just being a fine. How much good does it do to our economies and our justice system if we cut out those arrests and sentences? Ana Kasparian and John Iadarola (TYT University) discuss.

Ana Kasparian and John Iadarola on the implications of decriminalization.

We can do better, together: Alternative budget

Mar 212013

Features

Investing in infrastructure, healthcare, education, creates more and better jobs than austerity does.

by Armine Yalnizyan

These are the remarks David MacDonald and Armine Yalnizyan prepared for the press conference marking the release of the Aleternative Federal Budget 2013 in Ottawa, March 12, 2013.

Time flies and our Alternative Federal Budget is now in its 19th year. Year after year it has shown that we can have a Canada where we all do better together.

This year the AFB is more inclusive than ever, with 27 chapters written by over 90 contributors, each laying out progressive policy ideas ready for implementation. All policy proposals are fully costed and put within a realistic macro-economic framework to determine their impact on the deficit, debt and employment.

Behind the pink ribbon

Mar 182013

Features

Corporate charities ignore breast cancer causes and gain glory from fundraising for a cure.

by Miranda Holmes

An estimated 22,000 women in Canada are diagnosed with breast cancer annually and nearly ten times as many in the United States. Almost a quarter of these people will die. Nobody knows why.

Canada slides in UN standings

Mar 182013

Features

Decreased incomes, rights restrictions, drop Canada's score below developing countries' scores.

from the National Union of Public and General Employees

OTTAWA, March 18, 2013 – Canada has dropped out of the top ten on the United Nations (UN) human development index.

The UN report entitled The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World now ranks Canada as 11th, a disappointing drop from its formerly held first place in the 1990s.

Canada did improve over last years ranking but not nearly as much as some other countries. With this year's addition of two new indexes to the report — the multidimensional poverty index (MPI) and the gender inequality index (GII) — Canada falls further to 18th position.

UN Women agrees on anti-violence document

Mar 162013

Features

Rising voices worldwide say enough is enough.

by Courtney Brooks

UNITED NATIONS, March 16, 2013 — Muslim and Western countries have approved a new United Nations declaration aimed at combating violence against women and girls.

Canada’s responsible for our own bad habits

Mar 162013

Features

As Obama decides on Keystone, Canada forced to review our history of resource exploitation.

by Mel Watkins

A New York Times editorial on March 10 said “No to the Keystone pipeline.” Opponents of the pipeline, like myself, feel good. We can at least hope that the editorial has increased the odds that Obama will also say no — but whether the odds change enough to matter is impossible to say.

Problem is, feeling good or better is not good enough. There's something wrong with this story. It's as if the decision about the pipeline is no longer our decision. If Obama says no, that's the end. If he says yes, that's the end too. Isn't the definition of shirking responsibility that you have given away the power to make a decision on something that really matters to you?

Fukushima costs still mounting

Mar 142013

Features

Consumers pay, while power company profits.

by Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, March 12, 2013 (IPS) — Two years after Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the country faces 100 to 250 billion dollars in cleanup and compensation costs, tens of thousands of displaced people and widespread impacts of radiation.

The nuclear industry and its suppliers made billions from building and operating Fukushima’s six reactors, but it is the Japanese government and its citizens who are stuck with all the costly “fallout” of the disaster.

The new Pope’s baggage

Mar 142013

Features

Dark days of Argentinian junta haunt Pope Francis' past.

by John Baglow

Jorge Bergoglio, aka Pope Francis, is no sooner seated on the Petrine Throne than a controversy surfaces. It’s not one likely to blow over quickly.

His predecessor, Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, was a member of the Hitler Youth; but in fairness all German boys his age were enrolled on a mandatory basis. The new Pope will have a harder time explaining away his past in Argentina, however, under one of the cruelest and most bloodthirsty regimes in Latin American history.

Jorge Rafael Videla, president of Argentina from 1976-1981, oversaw a reign of terror in the country: thousands of murders, the kidnapping of children for adoption, the routine use of torture.

Waiting for water

Mar 142013

Features

Canada's new foreign aid priorities support mining, may increase local hardships.

by Miranda Holmes

March 22 is World Water Day, established by the UN as a day to contemplate the importance of access to water for life on earth. Just like every other day of the year., on World Water Day, nearly 2000 children around the world will die from diarrhea caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation.

It is almost impossible to overstate the difference access to clean water can make to an impoverished community.

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