By Alison@Creekside Prior to the enactment of the Canada-China FIPA, the Canadian government pushed two omnibus bills through the HoC which included provisions designed to substantially weaken environment policies and regulations, some of them at the behest of a pipeline lobby group: G&M : Pipeline industry pushed environmental changes made in omnibus bill The Canadian Energy Pipeline […]
business
Harper and FIPA: Sell-out on a Friday afternoon
By Montreal Simon He waited until late Friday afternoon to announce that the Cons had ratified their controversial trade deal with China. Hoping that most people wouldn’t notice. Ottawa confirms it has ratified a foreign investment treaty with China, more than two years after the controversial agreement was signed, as CBC News first reported Friday. […]
Online, and off the radar
By Rachelle Stein-Wotten Watch much Canadian TV? Watch many web series? For most Canadians the answer to both of those questions is most likely, “Not a lot.” So naturally the best way to increase the viewership for both is to fuse them together into one super, unstoppable, non-watched force, right? Wait . . . that […]
A Modest Opinion – Concrete proof we need more birth control
By Nathaniel Moher The Supreme Court of the United States, or SCOTUS as they like to be known (not to be mistaken with scrotum, the word I see, and now you’ll see, every time you look at the acronym SCOTUS), recently declared (like an old southern belle) that US employers can refuse to cover birth […]
PostMedia, post newspaper
By Alison@Creekside Hey kids, remember PostMedia’s pitch for their tarsands promotion partnership with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers?: Postmedia is proud to present its 2013 media partnership with CAPP. We are a media company national in scope but community-focused. Canadians know our brands, trust our content, and welcome us as a vital member of their […]
Programmed by Facebook
By Jim Henshaw This week the President of the CBC shared his vision of the future of our national broadcaster. It was a vague vision. Something about being leaner by thousands of jobs and less real estate, not overly committed to documentary projects or news and accessing audiences via social media and mobile instead of […]
You’ve seen the ads — now play the game!
By Drew McLachlan If you live in British Columbia, odds are you’ve seen the video below about a million times. It’s not a Tourism BC advertisement or the new video for that chillwave band your coworker told you about — it’s one of the many ads produced for Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline, which are constantly […]
Northern Gateway: Time to build a firewall around B.C.
By Frank Moher In 2001, Stephen Harper was famously one of the signatories to an open letter encouraging then-Alberta Premier Ralph Klein “to build firewalls around Alberta.” The idea was that Alberta had to protect itself against the encroachments of the federal government. This morning it is BC’s turn to defend itself against a predatory […]
Serving up labour
By Alison@Creekside Evan Solomon asks why restaurants don’t just raise wages to attract workers: “This is the criticism — raise the wages and they will come.” Garth Whyte of Restaurants Canada: “So let’s raise it to $100 an hour — we’ll still need them [temporary foreign workers]. That’s the issue, we have, uh, you know, people, […]
Warrantless surveillance comes to your phone
By Alison@Creekside Nine out of 12 big telecoms in Canada deigned to reply to Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart with info about their disclosure of customer data to law enforcement in 2011. Law enforcement agencies made 1,193,630 requests for subscriber data in 2011 Or, one request every 27 seconds Three telecom providers alone disclosed information from 785,000 customer accounts […]
