Now more than ever, the world needs data stewards
Canadians are surrounded by data that impact their opinions and actions. A recent innovative study from Statistics Canada estimated the value of the stock of data, databases and data science in Canada at $217-billion in 2018. From consuming suggested content on social platforms to apps that help us manage our interactions during a pandemic, data […]
Forget the deficit doomsters, the IMF’s got it right
TORONTO—With a projected federal budget deficit in the range of $350-billion in the current fiscal year, there are understandable worries over whether we are pushing ourselves over a fiscal cliff. While that is always a risk, the evidence suggests the answer is “no,” so long as we make sure that we are careful in how […]
Trump: the odds
LONDON, U.K.—Now is when it gets interesting. The announcement on Oct. 2 that U.S. President Donald Trump had fallen ill with COVID-19 hardly came as a surprise. His political strategy of playing down COVID-19 required him to be reckless about his own health, and other Republicans were already dropping like flies. Fourteen Republican Senators and […]
Senate’s spending, expenses oversight committee not good enough, says former Senate ethics officer Fournier
In 2015, in the wake of the Senate expenses scandal, then-auditor general Michael Ferguson issued a scathing report on Senate expenses calling for a “transformational change in the way expenses are claimed, managed, controlled, and reviewed.” Specifically, he recommended the creation of an independent five-member body to provide oversight of Senators’ expenses of which three, including its chair, would be […]
In this minority Parliament, parties can choose to do great things
Worldwide, 36,733,728 people in 213 countries have contracted the coronavirus, which has, so far, killed more than one million people, including 9,556 Canadians, as of Oct. 8. It’s estimated that by Jan. 1, 2021, there could be as many as 16,000 COVID-19 deaths in Canada, according to a model recently released from the Institute for […]
Racism kills, we demand justice
Joyce Echaquan, a 37-year-old Atikamekw woman, died on Sept. 28 under a barrage of racist slurs at a hospital in Joliette, Que. The hateful words that she was able to record in her final moments, while crying out for help, visibly plunged her into a deep state of distress. She wanted us to see and […]
Dispute in the South Caucasus runs hot again
Armenia is fighting with Azerbaijan again, and this time. it’s serious. In the South Caucasus, between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, just to the south of Russia and sandwiched against Iran and Turkey, Armenia has been occupying about 20 per cent of Azerbaijan’s territory for almost 30 years. This 20 per cent includes […]
The question politicians need to answer
OAKVILLE, ONT.—One of my worries about modern-day politics is how bad communication strategies are creating a chasm in our society, a divide that’s disconnecting political leaders from citizens. In other words, more and more citizens are coming to believe their political leaders are disconnected from them and from their concerns. Such a belief can lead […]
Immigration virtue signalling in both directions
OTTAWA—As discussions about immigration levels and issues such as temporary foreign workers are likely to increase post-COVID, it is important to appreciate that these will occur at a number of levels, ranging from factual, to the underlying values that inform and shape narratives, and to how the arguments are presented. Selection of facts often reflects […]
Going ‘digital by default’ isn’t for everyone
When COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic on March 11, working remotely went from a possibility to an inevitability for millions of Canadians. The tech industry, with its history of adaptability, had some of the first businesses to react, with companies sending entire offices home in droves. When Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke tweeted that his […]
