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Monday, April 30, 2012

Glenn Wheeler: May Day gives Canadian unions a chance to reflect on the future of labour (in The Toronto Star)

"We need to convince workers that we have a valuable service that we can provide for a very modest charge – in many cases, less than your monthly cable TV bill. They don’t need a union because their employer is part of a capitalist conspiracy but because management advances the company’s interests and workers need someone to protect theirs."

Full article: May Day gives Canadian unions a chance to reflect on the future of labour.

Glenn Wheeler is legal counsel for a labour union and an executive member of the Liberal Party of Canada.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Carol Goar: Greed loses its glamour, even on Wall Street (in The Toronto Star)

"... restive stirring is in the air. Once-passive investors are beginning to challenge the notion that corporate CEOs deserve 300 times as much pay as the average worker. Once-tractable voters are beginning to question the notion that raising taxes is unthinkable.

"The pendulum, stuck at the far right for a decade, is beginning to shift."

Full article: Greed loses its glamour, even on Wall Street.

David Olive: Ignatieff, "forgotten but not gone" (in The Toronto Star)

Full article: Ignatieff never has and never will understand Canada.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Stephen Bede Scharper: A tree, a hill and a prayer (in The Toronto Star)

"Deeply influenced by Mahatma Gandhi, [Julia Butterfly] Hill claims that one of the greatest crises we now face, both in our human and ecological relations, is the “disease of disconnect,” a “separation syndrome” whereby we don’t see our fundamental biological and spiritual connection with the trees, the waters, the air and the other elements of life. We somehow persist in thinking that we can continue with business as usual, destroying our ecosystems, polluting our waters, eliminating species, changing the climate, and it won’t adversely affect our health or the well-being of our families."

Full article: A tree, a hill and a prayer.

Heather Mallick: Shame on Collingwood-area residents building tiny houses to block wind farm (in The Toronto Star)

"... How we fool ourselves, as if our resolute wrecking of our children’s future is some kind of guarantee that we will live forever in endless moneyed comfort.

"It won’t work out that way. We live inside a planetary dome. It will grow hotter and hotter in those turbine-hostile dollhouses. If only their owners were forced to actually live in them, a Big Brother test case of how well — or how badly — we’ll endure a pressure-cooked future."

Full article: Shame on Collingwood-area residents building tiny houses to block wind farm.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Haroon Siddiqui: Is the Charter changing Canada for the worse? (in The Toronto Star)

“Canadians see medicare as a social good. Americans see it as a commodity. That’s the sharp, sharp contrast between our societies.” - Roy Romanow, the former NDP premier of Saskatchewan, and one of the architects of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Full article: Canada News: Siddiqui: Is the Charter changing Canada for the worse?.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Poll challenges view that Canadians oppose higher taxes (in The Toronto Star)

Full article: Canada News: Poll challenges view that Canadians oppose higher taxes.

Could it be that the famed antipathy to taxes of N. Americans is in fact something that has been consciously manipulated by the neocons and big business that supports them...?

Also an article by Ed Broadbent on this in same paper.