The federal government is giving Canadians a temporary tax break by exempting GST/HST on certain items during the holiday season from Dec. 14 to Feb. 15. Read More
A lot has happened since historian Timothy Snyder published his concise handbook, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. The tiny book exploded in 2017. Today it's more relevant than ever. Among the lessons Snyder draws from our fraught history with authoritarianism, the most important is: Do not obey in advance. Read More
One week in, the cease-fire in Lebanon seems to be holding, but everything is connected: only three days later, the civil war in Syria started up again after a de facto four-year truce. Read More
This fall, a social worker in Yukon temporarily was stripped of her professional registration in B.C. for endorsing conspiracy theories. While the case has raised awareness of Yukon's lack of regulation for social workers (a situation the territory is working to remedy), it did not appear to generate much – if any – angst over the line between political beliefs and professional practice. Read More
The indictment of Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza has triggered a great deal of public moralizing, almost all of it is missing the point. Read More
There is an Afghan proverb: “He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything.” It’s a lovely, life-affirming perspective. These days, unfortunately, the operative word in that proverb is “He.” Read More
The consensus assumption is still that U.S. president-elect Donald Trump will force Ukraine to yield to Russia as soon as he takes office on Jan. 20. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself said on Friday once Trump becomes president the war with Russia will “end sooner,” but he didn’t say it will end well. Read More
A lot of people are feeling like they don't have much fight left in them. There is a perceptible turning inward. People are avoiding the news in record numbers. It's understandable; reality seems to be unfolding in a fun house mirror. It feels as though someone put the '60s mantra "turn on, tune in, drop out" in a martini shaker, gave it a good bruising, and poured out the words: Turn off, tune out, and drop back from the ledge! Read More
It’s hard to imagine a less plausible venue for the annual UN-sponsored conference on climate than Azerbaijan. Baku, the capital, has a walled medieval centre that’s worth a day or two, but offshore, the shallow Caspian Sea is littered with a century’s worth of old and new oil wells. Read More
Made-for-TV romance seems to be having a moment. Long treated like the hayseed cousin of serious cinema, escapism blossomed with new legitimacy during the pandemic. Viewers in isolation embraced small-screen distractions en masse, from the weird spectacle of Tiger King to the heaving bodices of Bridgerton. Read More