Category Archives: Canada

How To Vote in 31 Swing Ridings (Maybe) – Some Thoughts on Strategic Voting

  Strategic voting is a fairly controversial idea – should you support the party/candidate who best represents your views no matter what or do you consider voting for a more ideologically aligned party that’s not your first choice if it might mean keeping one you disagree with more strongly out of power? In the current […]

Saturday Snap – It Was Twenty Years Ago Today… Looking Back to My Four-Month University Exchange to York, England

Hard to believe but twenty (!) years ago today, I took off from Regina, Saskatchewan and landed in Paris, France, a couple weeks before I was set to begin a one semester exchange in York, England (where I took three courses including a Film Production class that gives us the slightly un-PC clip at the top […]

Music Monday – New #NDP Ad: “Would you stand up and walk out on me?” #cndpoli #canpoli #skpoli

The NDP has released an effective new ad that highlights some of Stephen Harper’s “friends” – various criminals, fraudsters and cheaters… That’s pretty bad but this ad only highlights the senators (Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin) and other insiders (Nigel Wright) at the top of the Conservative party. There have also been some recent revelations that show […]

“Matthew tells us that Jesus and his family fled the wrath of Herod and were refugees in Egypt…” #canpoli #cndpoli

So it’s no secret that I’m an atheist. One of the many reasons I lost whatever inherited belief I had as a child growing up was seeing the wide range of hypocritical behaviours by (so-called) believers. I never saw the proverbial “stepping over the homeless person to get to the church on time” (or much worse).  But I did […]

“His Name Was Alan Kurdi”

A “refugee crisis” is something far away and remote.  Kenya.  Bangladesh.  Syria. Foreign.  Easily ignored. But this.  This is something different. This is a child. A child whose death has given a face to the millions of other children and adults around the world who are fleeing natural disasters and famine and war. A child posed as […]

Music Monday – “Who muzzles the poor scientist?/Calls troubled people “terrorists”?/Who wants the courts to just say yes?/Suppresses freedom of the press?”

The “Harperman” protest song is interesting for a number of reasons: the person who wrote and sang it is a federal civil servant and is now suspended from his job for an investigation about whether he violated the Federal Government’s employee ethics agreement At issue is whether Turner violated the code of ethics that all public servants […]

“Enough” – Great NDP Ad

One of my pet peeves is people who say that all politicians are the same. It is true that there are good and bad people in every party but the level of corruption and criminality in the current Conservative party is unparalleled in Canadian history.

The Eyes Have It – Jim Flaherty Reacts When Stephen Harper Says He Didn’t Tell Ray Novak About Nigel Wright Payment #canpoli #cndpoli #duffy #harper #lyingliars

No matter your politics, the late Jim Flaherty (who was Stephen Harper’s Finance Minister) is widely regarded as a stand-up guy – honest, sincere, and reliable. That’s what makes Flaherty’s reaction to Stephen Harper talking about the Mike Duffy payment by Nigel Wright during Question Period in the House of Commons so incriminating. Tim Powers, vice-chairman […]

How Google Could Rig the Election

This is about next year’s American election but could apply equally to the upcoming Canadian election. Our new research leaves little doubt about whether Google has the ability to control voters. In laboratory and online experiments conducted in the United States, we were able to boost the proportion of people who favored any candidate by […]

Two Months to Canadian Federal Election

The Federal Election was called nearly three weeks ago and I haven’t written about it nearly as much as I thought I would. I mean, if you’ve read this blog for more than a couple days, I think my politics are pretty clear.  Beyond that, there are tons of others who are covering every aspect […]