You will find Ottawa very clean, very modern and very safe with excellent schools and health care.
Ottawa
The Debt
One of the incessant ‘Trudeau must go’ posts includes this feature chart. It pegs Canada’s total debt as $1,163 billion, and each individual debt as $31K. These numbers are supposed to frighten us. But what struck me is how low they are. Compare this, say, with total Canadian consumer debt of $2,200 billion. Average consumer…
Inflation and The Deal
I heard a pernicious argument from a Conservative commentator on Rosemary Barton’s morning show yesterday. In between condescending remarks (“now look, Rosie”) the argument ran as follows: We are in a time of inflation so we should not pass measures that increase consumer spending. So we should oppose pharmacare and dental care. By contrast, though,…
The Jump
Based on research carried out by academics at Leeds University a study asks people people to make The Jump and sign up to six pledges that “could account for a quarter of the emissions reductions required to keep the global heating down to 1.5C.” The six pledges are as follows: Eat a largely plant-based diet,…
The Wild Fields
I watched a lovely bit of propaganda from Russian television on prime recently, the first two seasons of Ekaterina, the story of Catherine the Great, who ruled Russia in the mid 1700s. Though the second season paled in comparison with the first, it was still entertaining, and I’m looking forward to more. And I don’t…
The Anti-Vaxxers
As I write there is a caravan of ‘truckers’ nearing Ottawa at the conclusion of a cross-country trek to protest vaccination laws. I put ‘truckers’ in quotations because they are not, for the most part, truckers, and those who are truckers represent a very small percentage of the people actually doing that work in Canada….
Not Quite The Last Word
The essential question is, are they disadvantaged? Are they oppressed, are they in some way less able to participate in the culture that defines? What is ethical? What is right? What is good?
Our Leaders and the New Morality
It is long past time we stopped looking to government, corporate and religious leaders for any guidance on morality. They have shown us time and again how deeply immoral they have become.
Cancelled
You are the one complaining about cancel culture because you are the one who uses silencing and suppression as political tools to advance your own interests and maintain you
Macroeconomics
I won’t deny the utility of macroeconomic theory. But it is also abundantly clear that tracking the flow of money, goods and services in an economy is only one small part of a much larger and more complex domain.