SPCanada


The Real Irish Debt Problem

February 2, 2011

With Ireland’s government’s recent announcement of its programme of spending cuts we should note that almost a quarter of all Irish households were in arrears on at least one bill or loan last year and 60 per cent said they had difficulty making ends meet. Gross and disposable household incomes fell in 2009 (...
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Food for thought

April 26, 2010

The Toronto Star (6/March/2010) asks “Who will be tomorrow’s Builders?” It goes on to list the famous men (no women!) who have “built” the great concert halls, university colleges and other public and private buildings of Toronto. Maybe I have missed something here. I thought builders wore jeans and hard hats and poured the...
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Food for thought

April 22, 2010

Under Capitalism When the lead smelters came to Jiyhuan, China, the workers rejoiced for the new jobs, the infrastructure upgrades, the new cultural hall, and the new basketball stadium. The lead smelters also brought lead poisoning. Jiyhuan’s blue skies have gone, its fruits and vegetables are stunted, its children and workers poisoned. The story...
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Food for Thought

April 11, 2010

On the poverty front, Ontario brought down its budget this week. In a preview, the Toronto Star editorial (20/March 2010) called keeping the special dietary allowance for those on welfare with medical conditions a test of the government’s much publicized fight to reduce poverty (25% in 5 years). Well, the government failed the test...
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Mississauga The Good?

March 17, 2010

For some years the city of Mississauga, Ontario, has been held up as an example of how efficiently a city can be run, inferring that it is the incompetence of other jurisdictions that prevent them being run prosperously. While its next-door neighbour, Toronto, has had its financial woes for twenty years, Mississauga went without...
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Food for thought

March 11, 2010

On the environmental front, the Canadian government, like the US, has announced that carbon emissions will be reduced 17% over the next ten years. Unfortunately, as environmentalists were quick to point out, this will increase emissions by 2.5% over the 2006 targets already announced. It’s like the pas de deux, two steps forward, two...
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After Copenhagen, Then What?

February 22, 2010

The Copenhagen Conference on climate change is over and done, the fourteenth in the last two decades since Kyoto. What did this latest one accomplish? Fifteen thousand delegates from one hundred and ninety-three UN members attended. It was generally agreed that the earth’s average temperature rise be kept at no more than two degrees....
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Cab-ride to capitalism: servitude by the majority

January 7, 2010

Everyday taxicab rides may appear to be lacklustre experiences that are quickly forgotten. However, this might not always be the case. Sometimes our views of events may become clouded and we cannot see things for what they really are. However, after taking many cab-rides in an urban city, I began to see things in...
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Climate Change?

December 22, 2009

At a recent bookfair in Toronto, members of an organization called, “Supreme Master” handed out leaflets on climate change. The main thrust of their argument is that greenhouse gases are not the major cause of global warming, but de-forestation for cattle grazing land is. To support this contention they offer various statistics, some of...
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The Economic Crisis: Will Capitalism Fail?

November 20, 2009

The Economic Crisis: Will Capitalism Fail? Despite the recent pronouncement by the governor of The Bank of Canada that the recession is over, we are suffering through the worst crisis in capitalism since the 1930s Depression. Even he had to admit that the employment figures might not recover until 2014. So for the over...
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