I’ve been meaning to blog about an interesting Charter case that went to the Supreme Court a few years ago, Dunmore v. Ontario, which challenged the exclusion of agricultural workers from the Ontario Labour Relations Act. Until the NDP came to power in the early 1990s, agricultural workers had essentially been excluded from the scopecontinue reading

… minimum sentences. I’m not sure offhand what the substantive law on this in Canada is, but even apart from the sentence it’s not nearly as weird as this.

Peter Harder, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, has resigned, according to CTV. It’s relatively rare for a high-powered DM to outright resign, so certainly an opportunity for some ill-informed speculation. What was the straw that broke the camel’s back? Being passed over for the job as Privy Council Clerk? Two and half years ofcontinue reading

It’s embarrassing that I didn’t notice this before James Howard Kuntsler pointed it out, but what’s with the green foliage outside the window in the tape of Hillary Clinton declaring? It doesn’t look later than maybe mid-October. Chappaqua, NY should be in zone 6a, only half a zone warmer than us.

For anyone close to a TV, it’s worth tuning in for a few of the remaining moments of the State of the Union address, on now, to see the body language between Pelosi and Cheney, seated side by side. They clap at different points in the speech, and look distinctly uncomfortable when they both happencontinue reading

Our Heritage Minister Bev Oda’s press on Boing Boing keeps getting worse and worse, with Torontonian Cory Doctorow’s latest post continuing the trend. The Canadian Recording Industry Association, which embarrassingly now only represents American companies, is facing off against, well, pretty much everyone else: recording artists, Canadian record companies, composers, the Bare Naked Ladies, Michaelcontinue reading

From Konrad Yakabuski’s multi-page profile of Stephane Dion in the weekend Globe: When he appeared on the Tele-Quebec public affairs show Les Francs-tireurs last fall, interviewer Patrick Lagace asked him to prove that he has a sense of humour. Mr. Dion replied by asking whether he was familiar with the world’s shortest bedtime story. “Docontinue reading

So Canada’s New Government (getting things done — for everyone) has announced some “new” initiatives that will give homeowners grants for retrofitting their homes. This new ecoENERGY (why is the combination of lower- and upper-case letters so appealing to governments?) retrofit program will provide grants of about $1000 for homeowners who make their homes morecontinue reading

I’m curious what our resident philanthopy expert thinks about Margaret Wente’s column in today’s Globe. It looks like classic Wente… broad brushstrokes, full of cliched overgeneralizations, but (also classic Wente) she may have half a point (or not). She’s picking up on U.S. research by Arthur Brooks to the effect that charitable contribution rates arecontinue reading