Poet Shai Ben-Shalom writes: "Join the celebration this Canada day. Do the little things that make a difference, a flag in hand, a pin to the collar..." READ MORE
Review: Neither Fatal Nor Final
Canadians have a complex relationship with success and failure. That’s strange in a capitalist society where city life is a weekly succession of petty contests. Success is caricatured as a triumph of positive thinking that culminates in a prize, like winning on Dragon’s Den. Failure is a vaguely shameful exhibition of personal weakness: “The Morgans lost their house!” Neither is accurate. Winners and losers strive, and even successful people fail from time to time. Billy Durant, the Michigan wagon maker who created General Motors, went bankrupt in 1936 and ended his career as manager of a bowling alley. It must have been a well-run bowling alley. Successful people like to run things. READ MORE
PM Denies Builders Lobbied
Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday denied he was ever lobbied by developers to endorse a $1.45 billion plan to buy distressed Vancouver condos at taxpayers’ expense. Carney did not say if he personally held shares in any British Columbia development as he does in Ontario: "Mark Carney helped build this system." READ MORE
Call Ukraine ‘No Man’s Land’
The Department of National Defence in a newly-declassified report described Ukraine as a “no man’s land” of organized crime and political corruption. The confidential document was written in 1992 following the collapse of the Soviet Union: "Bribery and theft are rife." READ MORE
Overcharged 228,000 Clients
Federal regulators yesterday disclosed the Royal Bank paid $4.25 million in fines for overcharging hundreds of thousands of credit card customers in breach of the Bank Act. It was the largest fine to date against RBC: 'It reflects significant harm to customers.' READ MORE
Phoenix Office Cost Is Secret
The Department of Foreign Affairs yesterday would not disclose the cost of reopening a consulate in Phoenix that was closed 14 years ago to save taxpayers’ money. The new Arizona office follows an internal audit that complained of costly missions in the United States: "Canada maintains a large mission footprint in the United States requiring considerable effort and expenditures." READ MORE
Overturn ‘I Could Kill’ Firing
Muttering that you’d like to kill your boss is not an automatic firing offence, a British Columbia labour board has ruled. The decision came in the case of a North Vancouver cleaning lady, 60, fired last Christmas after a bad day at work: "She does not pose a danger." READ MORE
Guest Commentary
I felt we had freedom of speech on the web, that I could basically post whatever I wanted in whatever language I chose, and I wanted my day in court to fight them. What was my point? As a free society, we have a right to put on the internet our content in whatever language we want without government control. We don’t need Big Brother watching over you on the internet. They had to put in their two cents, they had to regulate. How could there be a medium out there over which they had absolutely no control? I mean, isn’t that part of government’s philosophy?
