As we start a new year in 2011, there increasing evidence that Stephen Harper, the temporary Prime Minister of Canada is treating the seat of the country's democracy, the House of Commons as an irritant that should either be used primarily to undermine the opposition or to introduce legislation which is designed to garner votes as opposed to dealing with the most fundamental challenges facing the country.  Here is a possible reform to make Parliament relevant again with a different government in power.

Read more...

This is part of the site that is focused on blogging on ideas, current issues and creative thoughts. It is hoped that it will evolve into a space for global dialogue with selected individuals and groups.

The first contribution to this blog and space for creative thoughts will be a call for a vision of a "Big Canada" based on a creative opening for a presentation that I often use:

Read more...

A creative thought about the amazing performance of Canada's Olympic Team in the 2010 Winter Olympics

Read more...

From turned-away Tamils to the Ground Zero mosque controversy, our world is becoming increasingly intolerant. To fix it, we need to reject the politics of fear.

In British Columbia, a boatload of 490 Tamil refugee men, women, and children arrive after a harrowing sea journey, claiming asylum from the well-documented human rights abuses in Sri Lanka – but the Canadian government claims the arrival is a threat to national security and that the ship may be filled with Tamil Tiger terrorists.

Read more...

The SEC charging Goldman for fraud demonstrates the ethics gap at the heart of the economic meltdown.

The fact that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is charging Goldman Sachs with fraud over its marketing of worthless subprime mortgage securities reveals that the world has not only gone through a financial crisis, it is also going through an integrity crisis.

Read more...

Law, ethics and public policy have lagged far behind in the rapid advances in technology and science. The Internet and modern communications technology has forced legislatures, ethicists and public policy to hastily deal with a host of challenges and opportunities posed by these advances. Challenges include grave threats to privacy from appropriation of confidential information on the web, data mining, and challenges to hate propaganda and pornography laws of sovereign states that are undermined by the difficulty of policing the Internet.

Read more...

The highest duty of a Prime Minister of Parliament is to uphold the Constitution of Canada, which includes the rights and privileges of the House of Commons and the duties owed to the Queen's representative in Canada. Stephen Harper keeps on failing in his duties on both counts as evidenced by the second prorogation of Parliament on Dec. 30.

I have been on record as one of the most strident critics of the first prorogation reluctantly granted by the Governor General in 2008 on the inappropriate request by the Prime Minister. It was a most dangerous and unseemly precedent to force the Queen's representative to dissolve Parliament just so the Conservatives could avoid losing a vote of confidence in the House of Commons.

Read more...

The multi-million dollar bonuses that American International Group (AIG) is handing over to nameless "executives", after accepting billions in US taxpayer bailout money is, understandably, causing a great deal of alarm in the media and American public in general.

This massive misallocation of wealth, and the government's inability or unwillingness to prevent it, is exposing a system of "legal corruption". As Errol P. Mendes explains, the ability of economic elites to influence the political oversight and regulation of their activities through lobbying led directly to the current economic crisis.

Read more...