We’re all whistling past the graveyard
HALIFAX—This is Easter weekend, COVID-19 style, in rural Nova Scotia where I live. The Red Maple Leaf at the fire station is at half mast. A little further down the highway, a snow-white church sits by the side of the road, silent as an ice-berg. A sign on the lawn has a message on both […]
Can language drive polarization in the fight against climate change?
The term “transition” is widespread in Canada’s energy and climate debates. What do people mean when they say it? What do people think when they hear it? A new study by Positive Energy at the University of Ottawa revealed that energy and environmental leaders are often talking past one another when they use the term. […]
More accurate testing key to fighting COVID-19 pandemic
By the time you read this, more than one million people worldwide will have tested positive for COVID-19 disease and more than 80,000 will have died. In Canada alone, more than 18,000 will have been confirmed as being infected with the novel coronavirus, with an accelerating death toll. It is a grim understatement to say […]
How the Senate can play complementary role in scrutinizing feds’ COVID-19 response
It is a source of hope that political divides have been bridged to achieve a massive federal response to COVID-19—including the largest economic package in our history—in a time of minority government. The measures aim to support the efforts of people across the country who are doing their part to curb the spread of the […]
The role of the WHO in this crisis has been tarnished by politics
OTTAWA—In February of 1997, I was the acting deputy head of information at the World Health Organization, and was invited to a meeting of senior staff in the office of then-director-general Dr. Hiroshi Nakajima. We were arranged in a circle in the director-general’s office at the WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, as it was explained […]
Team Canada shows co-operation pays after 3M mask supply threatened
OTTAWA—As Canada’s COVID-19 containment enters its fourth week, with many weeks still likely to go, a bouquet to some of our political leaders for how they handled U.S. President Donald Trump’s initial efforts to limit 3M from providing N95 respirator masks to Canada. Late last week, in a time when the world needed—and still does—co-operation, […]
Destiny’s child: the Queen as survivor
The 21st century, so far, has been the era of unprecedented, avoidable catastrophes. It dawned with suicide bombers mothballing the banality of evil by committing mass murder on live television, welcomed its second decade with a contagion of corruption that collapsed the global financial system, and greets its third with a viral contagion that threatens genocidal […]
We don’t know how this virus began, but we know how we can learn from our response
The internet is awash in conspiracy theories that the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak was due to an accidental or deliberate escape from a Chinese facility engaged in covert weapons development. A March 17 Nature Medicine article considered the possibility that the outbreak resulted from an inadvertent lab release of a virus under study but concluded “we do […]
Supporting international allies helps Canada, too
We’re so very focused on our own behaviour during the pandemic that we forget: without a vaccine, developing countries are at even greater risk than ours, because it’s harder for them to do physical distancing and workplace shutdowns. The further down the income ladder people live, the more important it is that they go to […]
Corporations stepping up shouldn’t mean their practices get a blind eye
When it comes to rationalizing potentially not-great decisions, defenders often pull out the old chestnut of perfection being the enemy of good. A few weeks ago, this was backed by compelling statements from Michael Ryan, the executive director of the World Health Organization’s health emergencies program. “If you need to be right before you move, […]
